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LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 
PRINCETON, N. J. 


PRESENTED BY 


Lucian Lamar Knight. 


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Knight, Lucian Lamar, 1868- 
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Woodrow Wilson, the dreamer 


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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/woodrowwilsondreOOknig 


WOODROW WILSON 








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WOODROW 


THE DREAMER AND 
THE DREAM 


_ BY 


LUCIAN LAMAR KNIGHT, LL.D., F. R. S. 
(M. A. Princeton ) 
STATE HISTORIAN OF GEORGIA 


Author of “Stone Mountain”, “Memorials of Dixie-land”’, Reminis- 
cences of Famous Georgians”, ‘“Georgia’s Landmarks, Memorials 
and Legends”, and “A Standard History of Georgia 
and Georgians”’. 


ILLUSTRATED 


THE JOHNSON-DALLIS CO. 
ATLANTA, GA. 


oe vi ae? 





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Copyright 
LUCIAN LAMAR KNIGHT 
1924 


DEDICATED 


TO 


MRS. WOODROW WILSON 


Whose loving hands closed in death the eyelids of the Dreamer and 
whose serene face caught the beauty of the Dream, this labor 
of love from a former student at Princeton is 
reverently and humbly dedicated. 
BY THE AUTHOR 


LUCIAN LAMAR KNIGHT 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 


N the preparation of this work, acknowledgments 
are gratefully made for material assistance received 
from the following authorities, to-wit: Dr. Wm. 
E. Dodd, Prof. of American History in the Uni- 

versity of Chicago, author of ‘‘Woodrow Wilson and His 

Work,” especially for his outline sketch in the “Americana 

for 1923”; Dr. Wm. T. Ellis, of Philadelphia, the noted trav- 

eler and newspaper correspondent; David Dawrence, of the 

Associated Press, whose articles on Woodrow Wilson have 

been most helpful (George H. Doran and Co., New York) ; 

William Archer, author of “The Peace President” (Henry 
Holt and Co., New York); Joseph P. Tumulty, author of 
“Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him” (Doubleday, Page and 

Co., Garden City, N. Y.); Dr. Stockton Axson, of Rice Uni- 

versity, Houston, Tex., for his critical sketch in ‘The Library 

of Southern Literature” (Martin & Hoyt Co., Atlanta, Ga.) ; 

Hon. W. P. Wilson, ex-Member of the English Parliament, 

for his splendid critical estimate in the New York Times 

of March 10, 1924; Hon. Lee J. Langley, of Rome, Ga., a 

member of the present Georgia Legislature, for an inter- 

esting article on Wilson’s courtship; Prof. Joseph T. Derry, 
of Jacksonville, Fla., and Hon. John M. Graham, of Atlanta, 
for information relative to Wilson’s early school-days in 

Augusta, Ga.; Hon. Henry C. Peeples, of Atlanta, for an 
interesting reminiscence of Wilson’s sojourn in the Geor- 

gia capital; and Judge George Hillyer, of Atlanta, for data 

touching the former President’s admission to the practice 
of law at the Georgia bar. Also to the following news- 
papers and periodicals: The Literary Digest, The Atlanta 

Constitution, The Atlanta Journal, The Augusta Chronicle, 
The Washington Post, The Washington Star, and The New 
York Times. 





TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PART I. THE DREAMER 


WOODROW WILSON: “BEHOLD, THE DREAMER COMETH?’’___. is 
BIOGRAPHIGA Pe DRI CU be sineme scree res eee ee ee 27 
THE STORY OF A MARVELOUS LIFE: 
TREC UATAC(ELISUICS He era ee ee en reer ee eee ee eee ee 29 
mT ACTOR ACY Meee eerie Pere ttn Been AMI eile eee sce 36 
Dom tatepata tic imi ee een te se re eee ee et 43 
READ EB EN SS SOU (2p chredl So NRU eA a0 ONS Ae ee WN SSE irae PARLE A Na SA 51 
De IOVENOM ONE Wructse Va ete eee a Fre ns ren 5 
Ores inet Dallimoreec on ventionue cs se 0 rete tr eee ely, Me es re 65 
Hoek resiUentror thos Oitccmo tates meee eee Beene a een Bee ee 70 
Ser NeUIVeXica Ne meeODIC HI Meme ree rere RMA te EE HL eg NU ry) 
GC NV OL GW atin ee nt eee Fe ee NNT OY oe RL te ED 84 
Pom merica te nters; they COntlictyeusus meme edt seen LL meee One Eee 89 
ereme ei tathies Peace. lable rau ast oe eee Ue ei evens hee see ee 96 
PORTS EA LAS OLMIVIT-" W USOT) goatee een tee ee ne ee Nomen Bang or cere ae 107 
PART II. THE DREAM 
Pest lielextrottherliecaguie, Govena ntmesnct seme ek en ae ewe ha 114 
oa Bhrases Wialson'? Mades Famous jis ne eure) rae ce Na 126 
Demy UsOt Sevamous OoutteenPOints (ens iene ee Sag 129 
famy iSO. Sa OutsCiteat: Ob jects pen ye tees oe eee ene ever amlaea ue Gray Vat 
Buawilsonts least Publics Words... 11) eee le eC OPEN Pate 132 
OmeEyy tisonrs on blished | Works ae eee ree te Nee eet ye 154 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


WOODROW OWILSON ie ar ce eee Frontispiece 
NASSAU: HALL, PRINGE TON? Inia) jt aa ee opp. p. 10 
BELEN AXSON WILSON (200 20 eee eee opp. p. 16 
BIRTH-PLACE OF PRESIDENT WILSON, Staunton, Va. - opp. p. 37 
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, AUGUSTA, GA.____. Opp../D. anes 


‘‘The Cradle of the Southern General Assembly.”’ 


EHR AUGUS LA MANSE: nce Un a Selatan eet inane Crem opp. 
MR. WILSON’S OLD LAW OFFICE, ATLANTA, GA. _... opp. 


FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ROME, GA... _ opp. 
THE ROME MANSE ouceecsouey A er eee opp. 
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL, PRINCETON, N. J. opp. 
THE WILSON COTTAGE, PRINCETON, N. J... opp. 
PRESIDENT WILSON’S FIRST CABINET opp. 
ENTRANCE TO MYRTLE HILL, ROME, GA. opp. 
PRESIDENT WILSON IN 1017 ule eee a opp. 


BETHLEHEM CHAPEL, WASHINGTON, D. C. opp. 


ST. ALBAN’S LOFTY CATHEDRAL 


ge id Me 9g aaa os 


41 
44 
48 
52 
56 
68 
72 
82 
99 

105 

109 


PART | 


THE DREAMER 


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WOODROW WILSON 





Behold, The Dreamer Cometh* 





UMANITY’S supreme Example—its divinest per- 

sonality and its best friend—was a Dreamer. His 
unmatched idealism found no counterpart in any of 
the creeds. He called Himself a Servant, but the 
world has ever since called Him a King. He dreamed into ex- 
istence a new era of Time; and then, in utter self-abnegation, 
He gave His own life a sacrifice to consecrate the dream. 
He was also a Teacher, and those who were of His school 
called Him the Master. Twenty cycles have come and gone 
since, gathering about Him on the shores of Gallilee, His lit- 
tle band of disciples, He taught the Brotherhood of Man. 
But, drifting down the centuries, His spirit has found em- 
bodiment in another Prince of Peace—his vision of a Golden 
Age, to be governed by a Golden Rule, has fleshed itself in 
another transcendent Seer. In the language of St. John: 
“Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his 
life for his friends.”’+ Like the inspired dreamer of Patmos, 
he caught an apocalyptic vision—he saw a new Heaven and 
a new Earth. In contemplating this strange figure, so little 
understood, but in whom there is less of mystery than of 
martyrdom and more of beauty than of bitterness, we re- 
call again the words of Holy Writ: ““And when they saw him 
afar off, even before he came near unto them, they con- 
spired against him to slay him; and they said one to another, 
behold this dreamer cometh.’’t 





* An address delivered in the Druid Hills Presbyterian Chureh, at the Memorial Ser- 
vices, in honor of the deceased ex-President, Atlanta, Ga., February 10, 1924. 


+ John XV, 13. 
~ Genesis XXXIX, 19. 


8 WOODROW WILSON 


On a golden day of autumn, in the year 1902, I witnessed 
a scene which I can never forget. For twenty-two years, 
it has hung in my vision, one of the rarest pictures upon 
memory’s wall. It occurred on the campus of Princeton 
University, and in front of an old building, called Nassau 
Hall. The aged Doctor Patton was about to doff his mantle 
upon younger shoulders. Heading the inaugural procession, 
which moved that day toward the platform, there were two 
men whose names are interwoven with the history of our 
country and are household words throughout all our land. 
One was an ex-President, the other, a future President of 
the United States. The elder, then chairman of the board 
of trustees, was Grover Cleveland. The younger, now to 
become the president of Princeton University, was Woodrow 
Wilson. 


It took me back to the ranges of the Jordan. In the 
beardless face of the younger man, I recognized an Elisha, 
who was that day to receive an Elijah’s mantle; but little did 
I dream that two Elijahs were there, to one Elisha, and that 
some day—in the loftiest seat of the mighty and on the most 
exalted pinnacle of this earth—Woodrow Wilson was to suc- 
ceed the great man at whose side he walked. It was a won- 
drous hour, when the orbits of two mighty luminaries, for 
a moment, touched—when sunrise and sunset mingled, in a 
gorgeous banquet. I could not then read what was written 
in the book of the fates. But well do I recall the words of 
Doctor Patton. Turning to the new president, he said: 
“Today, I resign to you my responsibilities, and may the 
gleanings of the grapes of Ephraim prove richer than all 
the vintage of Abiezer.” 


Thus Woodrow Wilson came to power at Princeton. Eight 
years later, Governor of New Jersey! Three years more, 
President of the United States! Five years more, at the 
great Peace Table, in the environs of Paris. To quote the 
Washington Post, a newspaper often in opposition to his 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 9 


policies, he there stood “the embodiment of the genius of 
America, and the foremost man on the planet.” 


It bewilders the imagination. 


When was there ever such an eagle’s flight—such a giant’s 
leap—from the cloistered quiet of a scholar’s life at Prince- 
ton to a dizzy height of lonesome solitude, which no human 
soul had ever reached! There he stood, in a sense, solitary 
and alone, an austere hermit, on a peak of lofty isolation. His 
rise to greatness was meteoric, like the gorgeous spectacle 
which we have sometimes seen, in the midnight heavens; 
only the dazzling flame of light shot upwards. I can find 
no language in all literature fit to phrase it, but, in its 
startling suddenness, at least, it suggests the lines of Brown- 
ing’s “Paracelsus” — 


“Are there not, dear Michal, 
Two points in the adventure of a diver, 
One, when a beggar, he prepares to plunge, 
One, when a prince, he rises with his pearl? 


According to a distinguished traveler,* who some time ago 
toured the globe, here are some astounding facts. He found 
the Wilson ideals invoked on the banks of the Nile, in the 
shadow of the Egyptian pyramids. He found them recog- 
nized in the new Turkey, at the Court of the Sultan, beside 
the Black Sea and the Bosphorus. He found them defended 
by natives in the Holy Land, by villagers in the European 
Balkans, and by Bedouins in the desert of Arabia. He even 
found them discussed among the fatalistic and stolid peas- 
ants of Russia. Everywhere in the unchanging East, he 
found the new light breaking—in Persia, in Siam, in India 
in Korea, in Japan, and nowhere was the influence of these 
ideals more pronounced than among the yellow millions of 
far-off Cathay; and it reached even to the frozen ramparts 
of Siberia. 


Napoleon’s career pales into commonplace beside this as- 
tounding record, the climax of which was reached when 


*Dr. Wm. T. Ellis, in “The Literary Digest,” February 16, 1924. 


10 WOODROW WILSON 


Wilson, surrounded by the master-minds of the old world. 
single-handed—battled for a democratic peace, at the anci- 
ent court of the Bourbons! 

Winning his fight for freedom, in a land of monarchies, 
only to lose it in a forum of republics! 

Was there ever such a commentary upon the unexpected ? 

One of the noblest characters in history was this great 
American—his life’s achievement one of the most fascinat- 
ing stories of the earth. 

It may seem an exaggeration; but with these facts before 
us, there is ample warrant for the statement that Woodrow 
Wilson, due to his unchallenged leadership, as the spokes- 
man of an oppressed humanity, in a great world crisis, was 
God’s ambassador at the court of mankind. With all the 
multiplied agencies of steam, of electricity, and of radio to 
run his errands—with newspapers and magazines and war 
correspondents to promulgate his doctrines—he was better 
served in this respect than any man who has figured in the 
world’s affairs. Beyond the bounds of Christendom, his 
preachments have reached to the most distant islands of the 
sea. Echo has multiplied them a million-fold—against the 
cliffs of remote Australia, up and down the Andes in South 
America and along the mountain ranges of the Dark Con- 
tinent. In a human sense, his name is above every name; 
and not excepting Buddha or Mahomet, he is the best known 
man who has ever worn the drapery of the world about 
him, save one alone—the Man of Galilee. If this man of 
vision only dreamed, when, I ask, has the world ever known 
such a dreamer? But to return. 





It was an ancient school of the prophets, to the head of 
which Mr. Wilson was called in the fall of 1902—an institu- 
tion of learning, founded by the pioneers of Presbyterianism 
in the colony of New Jersey. Not only was it a nursery of 
Calvinism, but a cradle of liberty, rocked by the earliest 
rumblings of the Revolution. One of its presidents had been 
a Signer of the Declaration of Independence.* Within its 


* Dr. John Witherspoon. 


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THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 1] 


walls had once met the Continental Congress. Just a mile 
away, on the outskirts of the town, lay the battlefield of 
Princeton; and it was only ten miles distant, at Trenton, that 
Washingon crossed the Delaware, on Christmas Night, to 
surprise the Hessians—kinsmen and countrymen of that 
same Kaiser, whom Woodrow Wilson was to bring to his 
knees. Called to the presidency of Princeton, what a bead- 
roll of shining immortals do we find in the list of his pre- 
dacessors—what a column of giants was he to follow? 
Jonathan Dickinson, the founder; Aaron Burr, father of the 
renowned Vice-President; Jonathan Edwards, the great 
thunderbolt of New England; John Witherspoon, the illustri- 
ous signer; Samuel Davies, Samuel Finley, Samuel Stanhope 
Smith, Ashbel Green, James Carnahan, James McCosh, 
Francis Patton. But, without apologizing to these illustrious 
shades, he was “the noblest Roman of them all.” 


But Princeton was not to hold Woodrow Wilson. It was 
only his training-camp—his school of instruction. The real 
arenas of his life lay elsewhere and beyond. Even then 
strange voices were calling;—a world’s leadership was 
beckoning to him out of distant clouds ;—a sense of consecra- 
tion filled his heart ;—a seal of destiny, aye, of martyrdom, 
was upon his brow. The Great War was coming on. It was 
almost at our very doors. Despotism was tottering to its 
downfall. On the fields of Europe, militarism and democ- 
racy were grappling in a last embrace, contending for the 
mastery. A world’s freedom was at stake. Humanity’s 
birthright was imperiled. Which should it be? It was the 
old choice of the First Century—Barabbas or Christ? 





Meted to the hour, there is always a militant man. Every 
crisis cradles its own leader. To the cry of the Israelites, 
oppressed in Egypt, God’s answer was Moses. When a cap- 
tain was needed for the conquest, He summoned Joshua. To 
give the world a universal language, in which to proclaim a 
universal faith, He called to Macedon, and in response came 


12 WOODROW WILSON 


Alexander the Great. To give the world a universal empire 
for the reign of law, he commissioned Julius Caesar. When 
the great Roman roads were built—all leading to the world’s 
capital—all waiting to be used as highways for the chariots 
of the Nazarene—He converted Saul of Tarsus on his way 
to Damascus, and sent him an evangel to Rome. 


To discover a new world, in which to give humanity a 
fresh start, unfettered by the despotism of the old, He 
steered Columbus upon his voyage to find a new route to 
India, and lo, the Western Hemisphere arose upon his track. 
To establish in America a government ‘“‘of the people, by the 
people, and for the people,” He commissioned Washington to 
command a Revolution; and to make the world safe for 
democracy,” in its last great struggle with the powers of 
darkness—aye, to lead a wandering host, from Egypt’s 
House of Bondage to Canaan’s Better Land. He bent above 
the Valley of Virginia and chose for the leader of his legions 
that mighty Moses of humanity’s new Exodus: Woodrow 
Wilson. 


Like the Great Deliverer, he did not lead us into a Promised 
Land, but, on Nebo heights, he caught the Vision—he beheld 
the Prospect! 





Dr. Campbell,* I tremble with misgivings, all too con- 
scious of my inability to meet the just demands of this oc- 
casion. If I consulted my own feelings, I would be among 
the silent listeners, while another voice than mine would 
kindle the incense of this hour’s eulogy. Except for the fact 
that I loved him, as an humble disciple loves his master— 
that, for three bright years, I sat at his feet, in the academic 
groves of Princeton—that today, though dead, I honor him, 
as one of the world’s master-spirits, as one of the republic’s 
reigning memories—except for these things, I could not bend 
to unlatch his shoes. But who amongst us could do justice to 


* Rev. Charles A. Campbell, D.D., pastor Druid Hills Presbyterian Church. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 13 


a life, “which exhausts language of its tribute and repeats 
virtue by all her names?”+ One of the most precious of all 
my possessions is a letter bearing the signature of Woodrow 
Wilson. It came to me in a dark hour when I was fighting 
one of my own hardest battles. The State’s Department of 
Archives was endangered. Its abolishment was urged by a 
hostile governor who, when a senator at Washington, I had 
roundly criticized for obstructing the policies of the admin- 
istration during the World War. Mr. Wilson came to my 
support in his own vigorous way; and to the governor in 
question he paid his respects in unequivocal English. The 
best eulogy of Woodrow Wilson is to state, in unvarnished 
truth, the simple facts of his life, and these in themselves 
will make an epic poem—one to thrill all hearts, which 
would need to borrow no music, and which would blaze 
undimmed beside that ancient Iliad, which has come from 
the immortal harp of Homer. 


Fitting it is that, on this Sabbath day, in honor of such 
a life, and in tribute to such a man, we should surrender the 
customary worship of the sanctuary and give to him the 
homage of this hour ;—for he was God’s prophet. His hon- 
ored father was pastor of the First Church, of Augusta, 
Ga., in which the Southern General Assembly was born in 
1861. For eight years, he was our nation’s President—a 
world-leader, both in the waging of a war for principle and 
in the making of a righteous peace, which would terminate 
all bloodshed and sound the bugles of an age-long truce to 
battle. Due to his world-leadership, he was the most widely 
known man that ever walked this earth. At the Peace Con- 
ference in Europe, he rose above all his compeers—greater 
than Clemenceau, the grim tiger of France—greater than 
Lloyd George, the shaggy-haired lion of England—greater 
than all combined was this tall giant of Freedom’s western 
world—this untamed eagle of Virginia’s Alleghenies. What 
he did there was his crowning achievement. 


A King once said of a Prince struck down, 
Taller he seems in death. 


+ John W. Daniel’s Eulogy of Washington. 


14 WOODROW WILSON 


Now that Woodrow Wilson is gone, we can realize how 
masterful he was; we can take the final measure of the man; 
We can assess the elements of his greatness. 


Going back to the scene which I sketched at the outset, 
it marked a turning-point in the life of our leader. Up to 
this time he had been a teacher. A school-master, if you 
please, a “bookish theoric,” a dreamer—yes, but a dreamer 
like Joseph, destined to mount an Egyptian throne, and, in 
a time of famine, to fill the sacks of his brethren with corn. 
His victories, until now, were all won on the fields of scholar- 
ship. His laurels were those of letters. But, from now on, 
he was to be an executive, with an ever-widening area of 
action, with an ever-increasing weight of responsibilities. 
In every task to which he was called, he proved himself a 
Hercules. Like another Samson, he lifted the very gates 
of Gaza, and literally wrestled with lions. At last, his super- 
human strength gave way; but when he did fall to the 
ground, he fell like an Atlas, bearing a world upon his back. 


It was for the sake of a principle that Woodrow Wilson 
broke with the trustees of Princeton. Even for a munificent 
endowment, ranging far up into the millions, he was un- 
willing to surrender the control of a great institution of 
learning into the power of the plutocrats, to fix its ideals and 
to mold its policies; and he was eternally right. He wanted 
to make Princeton what Calvin made Geneva—a republic. 
It was the kindling dawn of his great dream “to make the 
world safe for democracy.” He refused to be bought with 
gold. He refused to let his institution be subsidized. He 
refused to surrender an ideal. Rugged old Covenanter that 
he was, he knew not how “to crook the pregnant hinges of 
the knee that thrift might follow fawning.” He reminds 
us of the great Sir Walter’s tribute to the Scotchman’s char- 
acter, comparing him to the sycamores on his native hills 
—‘‘he would break before he would bend.” 


So Woodrow Wilson’s work at Princeton was finished. 
But watch the next move. New Jersey needed just such 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 15 


a man for Governor—a man who towered above the fog-belt, 
aman whom the corporations could not control, a man whom 
the lust of office could not kill, a man whom the spoiis of 
office could not buy. He was nominated by the Demo:rats 
and elected. The government of the United States needed 
just such a man for the coming crisis. He was nominated 
by the Democrats and elected. Four years later—re-nomi- 
nated and re-elected! Never once was Woodrow Wilson de- 
feated for office, and could he have finished that swing 
around the continent, we would today be in the League of 
Nations. Such a man an accident? Not while the moving 
finger of Providence controls the chess-board of events. 
Conscious of America’s mission to the world, he was also 
conscious of the part which he himself was to play in the 
great drama. An idealist—a dreamer? Yes. But tell me this— 
to what achievement can you point, in all the history of our 
race, that was not born in a dream, and that did not come 
from a dreamer? A visionary? Yes. But with a world- 
wide vision, with a Christ-like vision, with a God-given 
vision, and it was because of the vision that, in an hour of 
crisis, he was called to the kingdom. Rejoice, I say, that, 
in this blind age of materialism, there was one man who 
could see—and let us thank God for our immortal dreamer! 





“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” So lamented 
Henry the Fourth. To be our leader, in this time of crisis, 
Woodrow Wilson, I verily believe, sacrificed twenty-five 
years of his life, upon the altar of his country; and he went 
to his grave in all the pathos of martyrdom. Coming to the 
White House, in the prime of manhood, he was a physical 
and an intellectual giant. The glow of health was in his 
cheeks. He left the mansion of power, an infirm, a tot- 
tering, a palsied old man—bent and broken by the storms 
of state. During these years of terrific strain, he ran the 
whole gamut of the human emotions, traveled all the way 
from Cana to Calvary, and experienced almost every phase 
of life’s varied fortunes. Within a few months, he was 


16 WOODROW WILSON 


bereaved of his wife, the companion of his fireside and the 
mother of his children. After laying her to rest, on the 
hills of the Etowah, in our own state, he returned to Wash- 
ington, to face, in loneliness and in sorrow, the problems of 
a world. 


Marriage bells rang in the White House. Roses were 
planted among thorns. Grandchildren came to brighten 
his hearth-stone. He found happiness in a new life’s part- 
ner. Then came the sinking of the Lusitania, and the Great 
War was begun—the mightiest death struggle of all his- 
tory. Then the Reign of Terror, caused by the submarines. 
Then the sending of our boys to France. Then the murderous 
tanks, and the poison gases and the crimson holocausts. 
Then the Armistice, with its Victory; and then the great 
mission abroad. Burdens were laid upon him, the like of 
which no other President ever knew. Men who were his 
friends yesterday became his enemies today. Some who 
hailed him “Liberator,” afterwards cried: “Crucify him! 
Crucify him!’ Never came reverses swifter. He was literal- 
ly broken on the wheel. Critics assailed him with arrows 
dipped in the deadliest venom. But, undaunted and undis- 
mayed, he followed the gleam; and, if the future historian 
be true to his task, he will write where all can read that 
Woodrow Wilson’s greatest service to mankind was render- 
ed at.the Peace Table in Versailles. 


America will doubtless build him an unrivaled memorial— 
aye, a wilderness of monuments! But he has already built 
his own. It overtops the Cathedral in which he sleeps; and 
there it is—it’s the League Covenant! The proudest day 
of his life was when he brought it home to lay it before the 
American House of Peers. The saddest day of all was 
when it was rejected by the Senate, which cared not if it 
“broke the heart of the world.”” Dead—he is a greater power 
than ever in human affairs. Touched by the majesty of 
death, and sleeping his last sleep in yonder Bethlehem 
Chapel, he is still our matchlessleader. His splendid idealism 
still lives. Others have caught and will catch his vision; 





ELLEN AXSON WILSON 
First Wife of the President 


To 





THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 17 


and even as the ghost of Caesar marshaled the field of Phil- 
lippi, so the spirit of Woodrow Wilson will yet lead the 
world’s democracy into a peace, based upon that covenant 
—and his triumph is as sure to come as tomorrow’s sun is 
to rise in the East. 


I was impressed with an editorial which I read last week 
from the London Times. Said the writer in substance: 
“Woodrow Wilson was the world’s foremost figure. He fail- 
ed, as the great Law Giver failed, to lead the hosts which 
followed him into a Promised Land. He failed as the Naza- 
rene failed, to establish at once a world kingdom upon the 
principles which he preached. He seemingly encountered 
failure—complete and overwhelming. But in such defeats we 
find the seeds of victories; and, like John Brown, his body 
may lie moldering in the ground, but his soul will go march- 
ing on!” That is by no means a fulsome tribute. First, we 
stone the prophets, and then we aureole them upon cathedral 
walls. Despite the efforts of his enemies to belittle him in 
the eyes of the world, his tide is rising higher and higher; 
—it is already breaking upon the high rocks ;—he has only 
grown taller and taller;—and he stands today, as he will 
stand tomorrow, a pyramid on the sands of time! 





“Tam ready!” Those were his last coherent words. The 
great scholar was never unprepared. Life’s lessons were 
well conned—he mastered them all. No laggard was he— 
no truant at play. He met every test with honor. He made 
the whole course—undemerited. Called to the head of 
Princeton University, he answered, “I am ready!” Called to 
the Governor’s chair of New Jersey, he answered, “I am 
ready!” Called to the Presidency of the United States, he 
answered, “I am ready!” Called to give an account of his 
stewardship before the great bar of the universe, his 
answer was, “I am ready!’ Death was to him but the shadow 
of a larger life. That thing which all men dread was to 
him but the keeper of the postern gate, which swung to an 
eternal morning—which opened to the immortelles and to 
the evergreens of an unending spring. 


18 WOODROW WILSON 


Woodrow Wilson was literally a path-finder in the desert 
—a blazer of trails through a wilderness. He was the first 
lay president of Princeton. A new departure. Never be- 
fore had a college president, without legislative experience, 
risen from a school-house to a presidential chair of the 
nation. A new departure. Never since the days of John 
Adams had a President delivered his messages in person to 
both Houses of Congress. A new departure. Never, in all 
the history of our government, has a President crossed the 
ocean during his official term. A new departure, but God 
went with him, when he crossed the deep, and Jehovah was 
with His prophet. He recognized his responsibilities, which 
he could delegate to no man, and to no set of men, on earth. 
He was a President, de facto, and not by proxy. He was a 
power and not a puppet, with strings to be pulled by design- 
ing politicians. He despised the whole ilk. If ever a man 
did his own thinking, it was he; and he had all the superb 
courage of his splendid convictions. He wore no man’s col- 
lar. He felt no party’s lash. He worshipped no fetish; and 
he knelt to none save God. Assured that he was right, he 
was absolutely fearless of consequences. He was like Pal- 
inurus, in the Trojan Tale, or better still, like Seneca’s pilot. 
Said he: “O, Jupiter, you can sink me or you can save 
me, but I’ll hold the rudder true.” Next morning he was 
found cold in death, but his stiffened fingers still clutched 
the rudder of the ship. With all his vast learning, 
Mr. Wilson was a man of faith. He did not neglect 
his religious devotions, but set an example of church- 
going. He reverenced the House of the Lord. Com- 
ing to Washington, he identified himself at once with the 
Central Presbyterian church, of which Dr. Taylor was and is 
still the pastor. He preferred a church of the Southern 
connection, of which there were only two in the nation’s 
capital. He loved that communion, at whose altars he had 
first knelt, in which he had grown to manhood. His honored 
father had rocked its cradle, was for nearly forty years its 
stated clerk, had filled its pulpits, had taught its young men 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 19 


in training for the ministry, had gone to his long home, dis- 
missed with its solemn rites and blessed with its benedic- 
tions. On the grounds of the First Presbyterian Church, at 
Columbia, S. C.—in a Southern church-yard—slept both his 
parents.* 

Mr. Wilson was free to admit that in religion there were 
many things which he did not understand. To him, the 
miraculous elements of the Bible transcended, but they did 
not contradict, the established truths of science and the 
laws of human reason. He felt the bewildering pressure of 
the great mysteries; but his hopes were securely anchored 
—his doubts never won the day. Such problems as he could 
not solve, he adjourned to a higher class-room. He believed 
in the unseen realities; and man of learning and of genius 
though he was, he had all the simple faith of poor Barnaby 
Rudge, who, at the foot of the scaffold, in the time of the 
Gordon Riots, said to his companion: “Hugh, we will know 
what makes the stars shine now.” Listen to Woodrow Wil- 
son’s ringing words, addressed to his private secretary, in 
the White House: “I would rather go down in defeat with 
a cause which will one day be victorious than to win with a 
cause which will one day be defeated.” Still, from his mute 
lips, in the silence of the dim cathedral, his glorious optim- 
ism finds a voice, and he seems to say again in accents 
which the music of eternity has only sweetened: “At last 
the right will prevail.” 


Woodrow Wilson was a scholar in politics. But he was 
something more—he was a profound student of the science 
of government. Political Economy was his life’s study. It 
was what he taught; and for thirty years before coming to 


* Inscribed on an unpretentious marble headstone, rounded at the top, is the following 
epitaph, written by the President: 


“Joseph Ruggles Wilson, son of James and Anna Adams Wilson. Born at 
Steubenville, O., Feb. 28, 1822. Died at Princeton, N. J., Jan. 21, 1903. Pastor. 
Teacher. Ecclesiastical Leader. For thirty-four years, stated clerk of the Gen- 
eral Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, in the U. S. A master of serious elo- 
quence. A thinker of singular power and penetration. A thoughtful student of 
life and of God’s purposes. A lover and servant of his fellow-men. A man of 
God.’? Beside him sleeps the President’s mother, Jessie Woodrow, for whose 
family the President was named. 


20 WOODROW WILSON 


the Presidency he had specialized in the sphere of the Execu- 
tive—its responsibilities, its duties and its powers. He was 
here wandering in his favorite and familiar fields. But Mr. 
Wilson had other interests. Life was to him no “pent-up 
Utica”—he mused with all the philosophers and soared with 
all the poets. If he knelt with John Knox, he reasoned with 
Plato; and he dreamed with Bunyan and Dante and Shake- 
speare and Burns—till his own rapt and radiant vision came 
down through the starry spaces of the night. There dan- 
gled at his belt the keys to a thousand treasuries. He even 
understood telegraphy and short-hand, and was an adept at 
his own typewriter. He delved far beneath the surface. He 
probed to the very roots of the Tree of Knowledge and im- 
bibed wisdom at the fountain-springs of the great deep. Aye, 
at his tongue’s end, he seemed to have an Alexandrian 
Library of information. He trod all the paths of history. 
He knew the fate of empires—what made them rise and 
fall; he knew all the lore of books; and was in thought skin 
to all the master-minds of all the ages. 


In the correct use of the English language, he had no su- 
perior. Whether he wrote or spoke, he dealt, like a mer- 
chant of Bagdad, in the purest of pearls; and he walzed 
the sweetest music of his mother-tongue. Many of his 
phrases are familiar. They have passed into the currency 
of speech; and they belong not only to the scholar among his 
books but to the peasant at his plow. With it all he was a 
born leader of men—a divinely ordained champion of the 
world’s oppressed; and in his great messages and speeches, 
addressed as much to the masses as to the monarchs of 
Europe, he scattered broadcast the seeds of democracy; and, 
in this way, he did more to overthrow German militarism 
than did all the artillery exploded by the Allies. His leaven- 
ing words were winnowed by the very winds. His thoughts 
rooted themselves in alien soils, until they ran with all the 
highways and hedges. His ideas patrolled the world like 
battleships, bearing at full mast, and in bold defiance, the 
American flag. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 21 


Before we entered the War, his administration gave us 
the regional banks, which prevented a congestion of the 
currency, and averted a financial panic. We owe to him the 
Parcels Post, the Child Labor Act, the Farm Loan Act, the 
Federal Trade and Tariff Commissions and many other salu- 
tary reforms. He kept us out of war until the Luscitania 
was sunk; and then he became an avenging Nemesis. It 
was war to the knife, until German submarines were swept 
from the seas. It was Woodrow Wilson whe preacned pre- 
paredness. It was Woodrow Wilson who proposed and 
pressed to its passage the Selective Draft Act. It was Wood- 
row Wilson who urged a unification of all the allied troops, 
on the European front, under one command. It was Wood- 
row Wilson, who sounded the key-note “Not for plunder, 
but for principle! Not for idemnities but for human rights, 
and to make the world safe for democracy!” It was Wood- 
row Wilson who galvanized our forces at the front until the 
Hindenburg line was pierced, and down went the Kaiser, 
and with him, the Mittel-Europa of the Hohenzollerns! It 
was Wilson’s victory—that great Eleventh day of Novem- 
ber, in an old world’s calendar, when the bugles sang truce, 
and the Armistice was signed. He was red-blooded. He 
was pure-blooded. He was all American—a product of that 
matchless region, which today holds Lee and Jackson in 
its tender clasp, and which inspired the muse of Ticknor to 
write “The Virginians of the Valley”— 


“The knightliest of the knightly race 
That, since the days of old, 

Have kept the lamps of chivalry, 
Alight in hearts of gold. 


The kindliest of the kindly band 
That, rarely hating ease, 

Yet rode with Spotswood round the land 
And Raleigh round the seas. 


Who climbed the blue Virginian hills 
Against embattled foes 

And planted there, in valleys fair, 
The lilly and the rose. 


a WOODROW WILSON 


We thought they slept, the sons who kept 
The names of noble sires, 

And slumbered while the darkness crept 
Around their vigil-fires. 


But, aye, the Golden Horse-shoe Knights, 
Their Old Dominion keep, 

Whose foes have found enchanted ground 
But not a knight asleep. 


Woodrow Wilson hated a quitter. His vision was as truly 
moral as it was intellectual. Having entered the War, he 
felt that it was rank cowardice and sheer treason, to shirk 
its inevitable consequences, to turn our backs upon our for- 
mer associates, and to desert, in peace, the men who had 
been our comrades in war. His was an old Roman’s—aye, an 
old South’s—code of honor. It aroused his indignation, when 
the Senate rejected his Treaty—rejected with scorn that 
instrument for which so manfully he had fought at the 
great Peace Table, in a battle of giants, with the mightiest 
intellects of Europe. There he had won his fight. Was he 
to lose it at home? It lacerated his heart, when he felt that 
public sentiment, under a partisan lash, was crystallizing 
against him; and it was to change that sentiment, though 
worn by his long labors, and despite the protest of his phy- 
sician, that he went before the people, only to suffer a fatal 
collapse, when the sky everywhere seemed to be brighten- 
ing. But he fell, like a knight, on a field of combat, crusad- 
ing for the holy temple of Liberty. Our wounded soldier— 
stricken unto death! The sentinel of Herculaneum stood not 
at his post of duty, with a soul more unflinching. No martyr 
in the Roman arena endured greater pangs for his faith, 
without a protest and without a murmur; and neither 
Socrates nor Stephen went to his death, with a sweeter smile 
on his lips. The world was not worthy of this man, who 
was only a sojourner and a pilgrim here, and who carried in 
his breast a Christian’s passport to a better land. 


What strong man ever escaped the darts of detraction? 
Was it Grover Cleveland? Was it Theodore Roosevelt? Was 
it William McKinley? Was it Abraham Lincoln? Was it 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 1 


Andrew Jackson? Was it Thomas Jefferson? Was it our own 
lionized and laureled Washington? But, men of lofty stature, 
who lift the shield of God’s invincible knighthood, are never 
harmed by the hate which pigmies feel for giants. Critics? 
Yes, he had them; and little fellows some of them were; and 
some of them lived here in the Southland. What shall we 
call them? O, Webster, for a word! Pigmies, hiding in the 
pockets and dancing upon the shoes of a recumbent Gulliver. 
Insects, belting their wings around a radiant lamp, and buzz- 
ing in the blaze of a great light, which they could neither 
comprehend nor extinguish. Villified, even upon his sick 
bed! O, shame, where is thy blush? He may have made 
his mistakes. Who would not have made them in such a 
crisis? Be it so—but when his traducers have all perished 
with the ephemera of an hour—every man among them 
relegated to oblivion—this great American whom they have 
wronged will flourish above their graves, like a cedar of 
Lebanon—will lift his white snows to heaven, like a Matter- 
horn among the Alps. Aye, when partisanship shall have 
had its little day, History will rank him among our great- 
est Presidents, if not, in some respects, at least, the greatest 
of them all. 





We have heard much of entangling alliances. The spirit 
of Washington has been invoked. But we have moved a 
century and a quarter forward since Washington slept at 
Mount Vernon. Forces have been liberated of which he 
never dreamed. Today steam and electricity have annihilat- 
ed distance; iron cables now bind the continents; and, in a 
thousand reciprocities of trade, the interests of the world 
are interlocked, until they “glitter like a swarm of fire-flies, 
tangled in a silver braid.”’ Science has made the world a 
neighborhood. Christianity would make it a brotherhood, 
in which every man is his brother’s keeper, and even the 
Samaritan is neighbor to the Jew. Of one flesh hath God 
made all the nations of earth; and, willing or unwilling, we 
are already forever entangled. | 


24 WOODROW WILSON 


Said Stanton, at the death-bed of Lincoln: “He now be- 
longs to the ages!’ So does Wilson. The tallest land-mark 
of our generation, he now belongs to the centuries. He stands 
among the pyramids and the rocks. In him was gathered 
the great moral and spiritual forces of his day. He crystal- 
lized its loftiest ideal, registered its deepest yearning, em- 
bodied its most unselfish altruism. To the last, he was true 
to his great calling. Though a world-leader and a world- 
statesman, who spoke for an oppressed humanity, he was 
still a gentle teacher of men, an humble devotee at the shrine 
of Truth—with a world for his campus—with a millennium 
for his dream. 


The great fight, in which Woodrow Wilson fell, is still un- 
finished—unfinished like the great Cathedral in which he 
sleeps upon the stilly heights of Mount St. Alban. But 
there, uplifted to the stars, a finished Cathedral, with its 
towers and turrets, will proclaim his finished work and make 
his tomb the modern mecca of mankind. The glorious fight 
will not be lost—if only we heed the lessons of his life— 
if only we raise the banner which has fallen from his hands, 
and lift it waving to the sky! To hide the world’s inheri- 
tance? To copyright—to patent—to impound—the boon of 
Liberty? Perish such a thought! To bury the king’s treas- 
ure in a corner of a field! To appropriate to ourselves 
what belongs to humanity! Nay! It was not for this that 
Washington won a Yorktown and Columbus discovered a 
continent. It was not for this that God said to America: 
“Be thou a lamp to the nations.” We are not the misers 
of Liberty; but its missionaries, its trustees and its stew- 
ards; not its proprietors, but its propagandists. 


Religion was given to the Hebrews, not to be squandered 
upon the seed of Abraham, but, in Pentecostal power, to be 
held in trust for all, for Jew and for Gentile, for bond and 
for free. Christ did not die for one country alone—that 
country, a remote, a diminutive, a despised province of the 
Mediterranean. He died to redeem a world from bondage; 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 25 


and He died not alone for His friends, but for His enemies. 
At the entrance to New York harbor, with an uplifted torch, 
stands Liberty enlightening the world. Bartholdi’s great 
statue! It is America’s invitation. It is America’s great 
symbol. Shall we falsify its message and its meaning? 
Israel lost the Ark of God; and America may lose the Ark 
of Freedom, for a like reason, if she fails to recognize her 
world-wide mission, and to keep faith with her dead, who 
sleep “where poppies bloom in Flanders’ fields.’ 





This, in a nutshell, is what Wilson sought to do: to apply 
the principles of Christianity to a planet—to make the world 
safe for democracy, and to aid in the brotherhood of man. 
The dreamer will always be associated with the dream. It 
may be delayed. Partisan animosity may postpone its ac- 
complishment. But, when the glad day does come, in its 
white and shining radiance, Woodrow Wilson’s name—like 
Robert Emmet’s—can then be written! Till then, I take 
leave of him, as Horatio did of Hamlet: ‘Fare thee well, 
sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” 
Tennyson’s great Ode to the Duke of Wellington might well 
be chanted over Wilson’s tomb. 





Only a word more, and I am done. Nothing, in all the 
history of the Great War—so full of pathos and of tragedy 
—can equal the spectacle of that old man, dying inch by inch 
and hour by hour, for a great cause, aye, for the very same 
cause which nailed his Master to a Roman cross—because 
he was a king of men and because he loved mankind! What 
an ordeal was his—an ordeal of blood and of fire! Suffering 
what few men have ever suffered—enduring what few men 
have ever endured—not through months but through years 
—facing death without a shudder—still cherishing his dream 
—-still true to his heavenly vision—meeting the taunts of 
his critics with a sublime faith in the future, and even pray- 
ing for his enemies: “Father, forgive them, for they know 


26 WOODROW WILSON 


not what they do!” We call him our great War-President. 
But he died upon an altar—aye, upon a cross—of reconcilia- 
tion, and was the world’s great apostle of peace. 


What a tribute that was to the great commander-in-chief, 
when the Unknown Soldier was buried at Arlington! It was 
Mr. Wilson’s first appearance, after many weeks. But no 
sooner was his emaciated figure seen, in the line of march, 
than an involuntary shout went up from ten thousand 
throats: “It’s Wilson! It’s Wilson!” He was as truly a 
casualty of the Great War as that Unknown Soldier him- 
self—as truly a sacrifice upon his country’s altar as any 
soldier, who fell in his uniform, beneath the flag, mid the 
iron hail of an Argonne Forest. But now the old hero is at 
rest. He sleeps in the arms of Him who whispered by the 
sea: ‘“Bessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called 
the children of God.” 


Did we not know this morning that the gates of Heaven 
have opened wide to greet him—to give him a hero’s wel- 
come home, we might fancy, in the myth of the Arthurian 
legend, that he had only passed to an island-valley—to find. 
the healing balsam and to hold companionship with the 
kingliest of all the Table Knights. Seemingly his cause was 
lost. But his crowning day has come. God’s finger has 
touched him into sleep. Gone those wrinkles. Ended those 
heart-aches. Laid aside that heavy cane on which he leaned. 
At rest, that giant’s brain—the work-shop of so many gold- 
en fancies. His critics are all silent now, while a world 
weeps at his tomb, in the vast cathedral. He has found the 
Great Peace! In Death he lives to read his wondrous 
Dream— 


“One with the great Immortals, mailed in Might, 
He walks in Morning where we walk in Night. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM IA 


WILSON’S CAREER IN BIOGRAPHICAL BRIEFLETS 


Born in Staunton, Va., December 26, 1856. 

Was the twenty-eighth President of the United States. 

Entered Princeton in 1875 as a member of the famous class of ’79. 

Stood forty-first in a class of 122. 

Studied law in the University of Virginia after leaving Princeton. 

Practiced in Atlanta, Ga., but gave it up to take a post graduate 
course in Johns Hopkins in political economy. 


Finished his famous “Congressional Government” while a student 
there. 


Married Miss Ellen Louise Axson, daughter of a clergyman, on 
June 24, 1885. 


Became professor in Bryn Mawr that year. 
Went to Wesleyan University in 1888. 


In 1890 was called to Princeton as professor of jurisprudence and 
politics. 

Twelve years later he became President of Princeton University. 

‘Made his entrance into politics September 15, 1910, when he was 
nominated by the Democrats for Governor of New Jersey. 

Was elected by a plurality of 50,000. 

On July 2, 1912, was nominated by the Democrats at Baltimore 
Convention for President on the forty-sixth ballot. 

Elected President November 4, 1912, receiving 485 electoral votes, 
and inaugurated March 4, 19138. 

Ordered blockade of Mexico following insult to American flag by 
General Huerta, April 15, 1914. 

Mrs. Wilson died August 6, 1914. 

On May 2, 1915, delivered his famous “Too proud to fight’? speech 
at Philadelphia. 

Note sent to Germany warning against “murder on the high seas” 
following the sinking of the Lusitania on May 14, 1915. 

Accepted resignation of Secretary of State Bryan as a result of the 
note to Germany, June 9, 1915. 

Appointed Robert Lansing to fill the vacancy on June 11, 1915. 

Married Mrs. Edith Bolling Galt, of Washington, on December 18, 
1915. 

Renominated for President on the slogan, “He kept us out of war” 
at St. Louis Convention, June 15, 1916. 

Re-elected President on November 4, 1916, receiving 277 electoral 
votes. 


28 WOODROW WILSON 


Delivered speech to Congress advocating the breaking of relations 
with Germany following the establishment of unrestricted submarine 
warfare, February 4, 1917. 

Proclaimed war with Germany April 7, 1917. 

Proclaimed selective service act May 19, 1917. 

Proclaimed war with Austria December 8, 1917. 

On October 14, 1918, refused armistice terms to Germany until all 
invaded territory be evacuated. 

Announced to Congress that Germany accepted armistice terms, 
November 12, 1918. 

On December 5, 1918, left for France, arrived at Brest December 
14 and Paris December 15. 

On February 7 the President’s scheme for the League of Nations 
was adopted. 

Left Brest for America on February 16. 

Arrived in Boston, where he was wildly welcomed, on February 
24, 1919. 

Left again for France on March 5, arriving at Brest on March 13, 
and resuming his work at the peace conference on the 14th. 


Treaty signed, he returned to this country, where he took up his 
fight for the ratification of the peace treaty with the League of Na- 
tions covenant incorporated. 


Arrived in Washington from France July 8. 

Left Washington on speaking tour September 3. 

Stricken with paralysis at White House October 5. 
Returned to Washington too ill to see visitors. 

Took first automobile ride in five months February 28, 1920. 
Awarded Nobel prize in 1920. 

Received ovation when he left Presidency March 4, 1921. 


Formed law partnership with Bainbridge Colby, which was dis- 
solved December 12, 1922. 


Participated in burial of Unknown Soldier November 11, 1922. 


Participated in funeral ceremonies for President Harding August 
8, 1923. 


Died at Washington February 3, 1924. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM oi. 


I. CHARACTERISTICS. 





Naty OODROW WILSON has been called the great enigma. 
WW The intricate workings of his capacious intellect, 
| i)! there were few, perhaps none, who could follow. It 

is characteristic of the oracle that an atmosphere 
of mystery envelops the shrine, an atmosphere which even 
the zeal of the devotee finds a barrier to near approach— 
which he can neither penetrate nor dispel. Mr. Wilson was 
oftimes baffling, as much to friends as to foes;—in fact, 
another Thomas Carlyle, rugged, incomprehensible, mis- 
understood. But the reason is obvious. High mountains 
will inevitably veil themselves in thick mists, which attract 
the eye only to bewilder observation. Thus the enchant- 
ing effects of cloud-land, by the subtle law of association, 
are transferred to great moral and spiritual altitudes. In 
sheer gianthood, Mr. Wilson towered above the environ- 
ment in which he stood. He resembled, in this respect, a 
detached spur of the Rockies. More than once, while the 
European War was in progress, and, indeed, when the great 
conflict was over, and there were vast depths to be 
sounded and intricate problems to be solved, he was called 
the loneliest man in Washington. It was because of this self- 
created solitude of thought. He dwelt apart, by reason of 
his mental isolation, an aristocrat of learning, though in un- 
affected simplicity of manner, in sympathetic fellowship with 
the very humblest of human kind, he was at heart a demo- 
crat of democrats, whose deepest passion, burning within 
him like a furnace fire, was for the elevation of the masses. 
The peasant singer of Scotland was not more contemptuous 
of the mere distinctions of rank. He was, therefore, not 
simply a man of letters, in whom the cultural elements were 
predominant, but an avowed champion of the rights of man, 


30 WOODROW WILSON 


whose broad outlook upon life and whose rare power of 
vision made him likewise a seer and a prophet. 


Due to his world-leadership, re-enforced by newspapers 
and magazines, by steamboats and railroads, by telegraphy 
and radio, by a complex system of inter-communication which 
spreads its net-work around the globe, it cannot be gainsaid 
that he was the best known man, who has ever walked the 
planet; and all the countless agencies of publicity ran his 
errands, became his messengers and his missionaries, helped 
to disseminate his doctrines, and, in fact, did for him 
what they have done for no other mortal man. 


Swayed by great moral principles and impelled by the very 
constitution of his mind to obey the mandates of a powerful 
intellect, he moved of necessity in a distinct orbit of his 
own. No man and no syndicate of men could control Wood- 
row Wilson, a fact which more than one manipulator of po- 
litical machines learned to his sorrow ;—he was not a subal- 
tern but a superior, not a follower but a leader, a blazer of 
trails and a builder of highways; and without some friction 
it was difficult for him to work in harness with other men. 
He always insisted that his mind was an affair of one track; 
and most certainly is it true that whatever. he undertook to 
do he did singly, with an eye fixed steadfastly upon the end 
in view. It often made him oblivious to other things. 





Misunderstandings were inevitable. He broke not only 
with the Democratic bosses of New Jersey—a thing which 
he was bound to do—but at a crisis in his fortunes he broke 
with Colonel Harvey and with Colonel Watterson. It was 
unintentional, a result brought about without any desire on 
his part to seem ungrateful or discourteous. On the eve of 
the Baltimore Convention, in the famous incident of the 
“cocked hat,” he came near alienating William J. Bryan, who 
later turned the tide which bore him to the White House. 
William F. McCombs, an old Princeton man, who volunteered 
in the fight to make Wilson President, who organized the 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM oH! 


movement to nominate him and who was later his campaign 
manager,—even he became disgruntled when there was no 
cabinet portfolio forthcoming; nor did his old confidential 
adviser, Colonel E. M. House,—who was perhaps closer to 
the President than anyone else—escape the nipping frost 
of strained relations. But it was due to the fact that Mr. 
House, in the President’s absence from the treaty table, 
substantially nullified his work by agreeing to a separation 
of the Treaty from the League Covenant. Lansing, 
his Secretary of State, who accompanied Mr. Wilson 
to Paris, was afterwards unceremoniously dismissed 
from one of the highest offices of the government, due to 
certain high handed acts of usurped authority; and 
Tumulty, his faithful private secretary for eleven years, was 
often mystified by his moods and in the end felt the shadow 
of estrangement fall between himself and his chief, but his 
warm Irish heart was always tender, and he felt that it was 
due to hostile pressure during the great leader’s last illness. 

Mr. Wilson found it difficult to forgive—he never forgot. 
Nothing could have been bitterer than the old fight at 
Princeton, the scars of which he carried to his grave, in a 
memory of tears. It divided not only the alumni, but even 
the professors into hostile camps. Mr. Wilson was relentless 
in his warfare to make Princeton a democracy, to uproot the 
old social castes. Dean West and Taylor Pyne became his 
unrelenting enemies. He broke with ex-President Cleveland, 
to whom he did not afterwards speak, except in the coldest 
restraint. He extended no congratulations to his successor, 
Dr. Hibben, and all overtures which were made by that 
courtly gentleman he is said to have sternly repelled. While 
Governor of New Jersey, Mr. Wilson continued to reside 
in the old college town, but he took little or no part in its 
social life and was at home only to his immediate circle of 
friends.* 

If he sometimes seemed to be ungrateful, as critics have 
so often charged, if he appeared to forget those who had 
helped to lift him to power, if he sometimes went so far as 


*David Lawrence. 


= WOODROW WILSON 


to sever old ties of attachment, for apparently slight rea- 
sons, and to show an excess of friendship for men whose 
claims upon him were only trivial, it was not because he 
was lacking in gratitude, for no man ever surpassed him in 
those finer things which belong to the code of honor, which 
minister to the beauty of life and to the nobility of character. 
But principles with Mr. Wilson were paramount—they out- 
weighed personalities; if he was intolerant of anything it 
was disloyalty, though never in his life, with con- 
scious intent, did he perform an unfriendly act or speak an 
unfriendly word. 





Mistakes he made ;—but he moved upon such a lofty plane, 
was so irradiated by his transcendent dream, that he found 
it irksome to encumber himself with manipulative details, 
to consider what, in comparison with the great end in view, 
were mere trifles; while to engage in the by-plays of politics 
was to him a thing abhorrent, belonging to the arts of the 
demagogue and to the tricks of the charletan. In this re- 
spect, he reminds one of the noble words of Carlyle: “Will 
the courser of the sun work softly in the harness of a dray- 
horse? His hoofs are of fire, and his path is through the 
heavens, bringing light to all lands. Will he lumber on mud 
highways, dragging ale for earthly appetites, from door to 
door ?” 

To quote a distinguished former member of the English 
Parliament,* with the death of Mr. Wilson, the time was at 
hand when men could arrive at a simple impression of him, 
“detached from passion, from panegyric, and from propa- 
ganda.” The fundamental thing about him, according to 
this same critic, was his Caledonian blood. He was as mucha 
Scot, a Presbyterian and an elder, as if he had lived all his 
life in Aberdeen or in Edinburgh. Says the Englishman 
further: “In every essential characteristic, he belonged to 
that small but superb nation, north of the Tweed, which 
nourishes the body on porridge and the soul on predestina- 
tion.” Moreover, he adds that, in Mr. Wilson, the Scottish 


* Hon. P. W. Wilson, Ex.-M. P., in the New York Times of February 10, 1924. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 33 


strain was not only pure, but refined in that furnace of 
faith called the province of Ulster. 

It is said that Mr. Wilson was deficient in his knowledge 
of human nature; that he did not understand men; that he 
was lacking in what is called finesse or tact; that he made 
no overtures and put forth no effort to reconcile differences 
of opinion and to bring strong elements to his support. There 
may be some truth in this criticism. If he could not bring 
men to his way of thinking by the powers of argument, he 
sought to bring them in no other way, and they were free 
to oppose him if they liked. But Mr. Wilson’s appointees 
were almost invariably men of high character. He was em- 
barrassed by no “Tea-pot Dome” disclosures and by no 
“Veterans Bureau” scandals. It was his Scotch caution 
which made him send Col. House on many a secret errand to 
ascertain the truth of things and the fitness of men for 
grave responsibilities. 


There were some things, in high favor with the politicians, 
which Mr. Wilson could not bring himself to do. One of 
these was to subvert the hospitality of the White house to 
the arts of political manipulation, to invite guests to break 
bread with him, for the purpose of winning them over to his 
side, and in the event of failure, to tax them with a breach 
of the social amenities. Duplicity—cunning—underhanded- 
ness—craft, and words of like import, were not found in the 
lexicon of this man, who would not have “flattered Neptune 
for his trident nor Jove for his power to thunder.” The 
White House was his home. It was sacred to friendship; 
and so far as he was concerned its sanctity was never violat- 
ed, its freedom from all restraint was never employed to fur- 
ther ulterior ends. Nor was there ever the least taint upon 
the private life of this man, nor could all the venom of poli- 
tics invent a lie which could do him harm. Even his enemies 
at Princeton, when the fires were raging fiercest, would not 
for one moment lend themselves to any effort, the purpose 
of which was to asperse his character. He was not only a 


34 WOODROW WILSON 


man of strict probity, but, like Caesar’s wife, he was “above 
suspicion.” 





Mr. Wilson’s sense of responsibility was profound, caus- 
ing him with his own hand to draft measures and to perform 
tasks, which the average man would have left to clerks. It 
was this characteristic which made him appear so often in 
person before the two houses of Congress—instead of com- 
municating his messages in the usual way. Moreover, he 
reasoned in this wise: the responsibility of Senators was to 
their States—the responsibility of Representatives was to 
their districts—while the responsibility of the President was 
to the people at large; he represented the nation as a unit; 
it was a centralized obligation. Going still further, it was 
this same imperious sense of responsibility which impelled 
him to cross the ocean and at the Peace Table to shape the 
deliberations of an international forum, composed of the 
world’s master-minds. 

Compromise was a word, the use of which he did not 
know. It was not in his dictionary of thought; and there 
echoed through his whole life the phrase of Napoleon’s vet- 
eran followers: “The Old Guard dies, but never surrend- 
ers.”” Nor was he versed—as we have already observed—in 
the subtle arts. of diplomacy, accustomed as he was to bat- 
ties in the open. His strength lay in power of appeal. His- 
torian though he was, dark rooms and secret conclaves were 
uncongenial; and he loved the free air of the great com- 
mons of God. 


His religious beliefs took the form of a pronounced Cal- 
vinism. It mattered not what happened, God was on His 
throne, was still in touch with His universe, was still the 
supreme arbiter of its destinies. This was never more strik- 
ingly manifest than in the brief but powerful philippic which 
he hurled at his enemies, when, leaning heavily upon his 
cane, and addressing a delegation of friends in Washington, 
only a few weeks before the end came, he said: “I have 
seen fools resist Providence, but it has always brought them 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 35 


to destruction. Just as surely as God reigns, our cause will 
yet triumph.” To him, the keeper of Israel neither slum- 
bered nor slept. Back of the darkest shadows a divinity 
moved; and in the ultimate verdicts of the future all wrongs 
would be righted. 

It is certain that a riper scholar never entered the White 
House, either as occupant or visitor. In style, whether 
written or spoken, he was unaffected; he thought in terms 
of crystal. His critics dubbed him the school-master; but 
he was a recognized authority on the fundamentals of the 
Constitution, a consummate master of the science of gov- 
ernment. Never was there a President who had devoted 
thirty. years of technical study to the very powers and duties 
which he was later to exercise and to perform. His dream 
was caricatured—belittled—ridiculed—greeted with the 
sneers of an effusive raillery. But derision has ever been 
the tribute which shallow brains have paid to genius. They 
even mocked at the Master in the hour of His Crucifixion. 
They laughed at Noah, but the ark which he built preserved 
the human race from extinction. They laughed at Joseph, 
but he mounted an Egyptian throne, and saved his brethren 
who sold him to the Midianites, They laughed at David, but 
with a pebble from the brook he slew the burly giant of the 
Philistines, and from a sheepfold in Judah he stepped to 
the kingship of Israel. They laughed at Newton, but he 
discovered the law of gravitation. They laughed at Coperni- 
cus but he retold the story of the universe. They laughed 
at Columbus, but he discovered a Western Hemisphere. They 
laughed at Morse, but telegraphy has built his monument. 
They laughed at Cyrus W. Field, but he laid his cable under 
the very waves of the sea and bound the continents with 
hoops of steel. They laughed at all these men—now 
crowned immortals. But who, except the inmate of some 
lunatic asylum, ever laughs at them now? The folly of 
today is often the wisdom of tomorrow. But, in the light of 
these traits and characteristics, let the narrative proceed. 


36 WOODROW WILSON 


Il. HEREDITY. 





quaint ourselves with its mere biographical details. 

We must know something of its antecedents; for, 

in scenes remote and in days far distant, the key to 
its success or failure may be found on the walls of some 
ancestral manor. ‘Environment we may change. Heredity 
is something which cannot be escaped. It is immutably 
fixed. More powerful, therefore, than any other influence 
in life, it may be said to determine the molds in which char- 
acter is cast—to supply its initial impulses, if not its gov- 
erning principles. There is a suggestion of humor, per- 
haps, but an element of truth, in the dictum of the New 
England Autocrat, that a man’s education properly begins 
at least a century before his birth. 


In the strong personality of the twenty-eighth President 
of the United States—both in his native powers of intellect 
and in his robust moral fibres—there was strikingly mani- 
fest the heritage of the Scotch-Irish, an element of our 
population which has furnished to the government under 
which we live its vertebral structure, and from which many 
of our Federal chief-executives have sprung. The Wilsons 
came of this vigorous and virile stock. The President’s 
mother was pure Scotch, though barn at Carlisle, in the 
north of England. 


Back of Mr. Wilson, there were generations of orthodox 
piety, interlarded with great learning. His ancestors thought 
and preached in the iron theology of John Knox. They were 
men of books who breathed the free air of universities. 
They gathered but little gear, in a worldly sense, preferring 
the reward of heavenly riches; but they gave an unswerving 
loyalty to the old Blue Banner and made an enduring con- 
tribution to the annals of the kirk. 


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THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 37 


James Wilson, the original immigrant, who brought the 
family escutcheon to America, came from Ulster, in the 
north of Ireland. He was a pioneer editor, of rugged inde- 
pendence, who, to use a convenient phrase, “did his own 
thinking.” He landed in Philadelphia, in 1807, and soon 
afterwards married Anne Adams, who, having crossed in 
the same vessel, was now ready to embark with him, in the 
good ship, Matrimony, for a longer voyage, upon a more un- 
certain sea of waters. They lived for a few years in the 
City of Brotherly Love. But the spirit of adventure was 
in the air, and the steam-boat was waiting. Initial experi- 
ments on the Ohio, anticipated those on the Hudson. At 
any rate, whether propelled by steam or wafted by wind, 
James Wilson drifted down the Ohio, and at Steubenville, in 
the Buck-eye region, he set up his printing press and began 
to disseminate his opinions. He was also a magistrate, it 
seems, and in the unsettled conditions of life on the frontier, 
he administered justice with a stern rigor, after the manner 
of the Scot. 


Here was born the President’s father, Joseph Ruggles 
Wilson, who became a man of unusual attainments, a dis- 
tinguished Presbyterian educator and divine, and a master 
of assemblies. It was also in this place that the elder Wilson 
met a charming divinity, whom he later married. She was 
still attending the Steubenville Academy, when the love af- 
fair began, and was in her teens, a lassie as bonnie as ever 
trod heather or cast the spell of winsome magic. This was 
Jessie Woodrow, a daughter of Dr. Thomas Woodrow, an 
eminent divine of the Ohio Valley, famed not less for his 
eloquence than for his scholarship. 


The Woodrows came directly from Carlisle, Eng., where 
the little kirk still stands a memorial to this honored name 
and bears testimony to the zeal for souls with which its 
bearer “allured to brighter worlds.” In the religious coun- 
cils of Scotland, the Woodrows were men of power. One of 
the number was Dr. Peter Woodrow, who evoked the satire 
of Robert Burns, in “The Twa Herds.” If not an ancestor 


38 WOODROW WILSON 


of the President, he was certainly_.among his kindred. More 
than once, Mr. Wilson was heard to say that he descended 
from the Woodrows of Paisley; but the distance between 
Paisley and Carlisle—though the Scotch border runs between 
them—is not sufficient to overcome the presumption that 
both groups belong to the same immediate family connec- 
tion. 

Soon after leading his young bride to the altar, Joseph 
Wilson began to acquire a reputation which traveled up and 
down the country lanes and reached beyond the forest 
emeralds. An alumnus of Princeton Seminary, he espoused 
the conservative theology, but with an independent spirit. 
He became at once both an educator and a preacher. His 
fame at length overleaped the Alleghenies; and we soon find 
him at Staunton, in the Valley of Virginia, established as 
pastor over an influential flock of Presbyterians, who did not 
object to lengthy discourses, if they contained the meat of 
the divine word and conformed to the orthodox standards 
of Westminster. These Valley Presbyterians have always 
been staunch patriots. During one of the darkest periods 
of the Revolution, when the tide of liberty was at its lowest 
ebb, Washington fired the heart of the American Army by 
citing these Calvinists of the Valley. Said he: “Strip me 
of the wretched and suffering remnant of my soldiers; take 
from me all I have left; leave me only a standard; give me 
but the means of planting it among the mountains of West 
Augusta, and I will yet draw around me the men who will 
lift our bleeding country from the dust and set her free.” 





Woodrow Wilson was here born, at Staunton, Va., De- 
cember 28, 1856, the fourth child but eldest son, in a goodly 
number of offspring. His birth amid the Christmas fes- 
tivities was significant of his mission—one of peace to the 
nations. He was literally a child of the manse, learning his 
alphabet out of the Shorter Catechism and taking his pun- 
ishment, with becoming meekness, from the Confession of 





FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF AUGUSTA 


Known as the birthplace of the Southern General Assembly. Dr. 
Joseph R. Wilson, the President’s father, was 
long its honored pastor 





THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM Bly, 


Faith. The future President was christened Thomas Wood- 
row; and it was by his first name, abbreviated into “Tom,” 
that he was known to his playmates and even addressed by 
his fellow-students at college; but eventually this name was 
dropped. 


Preachers are men of migratory habits. Before Woodrow 
Wilson was two years old, there came another removal. 
This time it was southward. His father, in 1858, accepted 
a call from the First Presbyterian church, of Augusta, Ga. 
Here we find the family, at the outbreak of the War Be- 
tween the States; and it was in this same church, of which 
the elder Wilson was pastor, that the General Assembly of 
the Southern Presbyterian Church was organized in 1861. 
The great Dr. Benjamin M. Palmer, of New Orleans, was 
made its first official head, Dr. Joseph R. Wilson, becoming 
its first stated clerk, an office which he held for thirty- 
seven years.* It may be said that the President’s father was 
a strong believer in home rule. He adhered, therefore, 
tenaciously to the fortunes of the South, though born in the 
old Northwest Territory, a region which the fathers of the 
Republic set apart to freedom, forever forbidding the slave- 
power to cross the Ohio frontier. 


Quite naturally, the earliest memories of Woodrow Wil- 
son ran back to these Augustan days. It was ever a vivid 
recollection that he one day heard a resident of the town 
make this remark: “Lincoln has been elected President and 
there will certainly be war.” Another lingering picture was 
of a time, four years later, when he first saw the old chief- 
tain of the Southern Confederacy, Mr. Davis. The latter 
was then a prisoner of war, closely guarded, and was pass- 
ing through Augusta, en route to Fortress Monroe, Va. 

War-time upheavals delayed young Wilson’s schooling, 
except for such elementary instruction as he received at 
home. He was nine years old when the war ended. Nor was 
it until then that he saw the inside of a school-room, and 


* 1861-1865, called permanent clerk; 1865-1898, called stated clerk. 


40 WOODROW WILSON 


his first school-teacher was a veteran soldier of the six- 
ties, afterwards a noted historian and scholar of the South, 
Prof. Joseph T. Derry, who still survives. Prof. Derry is 
never happier than in dwelling upon the days when he 
taught a republic’s future President and helped to shape a 
coming League of Nations. 


While a lad in Augusta, young Wilson’s constant playmate 
was a lad of his own age, who lived in the same neighbor- 
hood, by name, Joseph Rucker Lamar. The latter’s father 
was likewise a minister, but of a different denomination, 
the Church of Disciples. These youngsters once organized 
a baseball team in Augusta; and while they often met on 
the diamond, it is said that they met even more frequently 
in the garret of the Lamar homestead, where they locked 
horns in amateur debates. 


Some forty years later, Lamar, though a Democrat, was 
elevated by President Taft to the supreme bench of the 
nation. It was a compliment both to the man himself, and 
to the city of Augusta, whose people were greatly endeared 
to the President by frequent visits which he made here, be- 
fore and after entering the White House. On the other 
hand, Mr. Taft’s delightful personality has always been most 
charming to Augustans. Not until Justice Lamar assumed 
the ermine of the country’s highest court, did he again meet 
his old playmate when, in 1918, Woodrow Wilson came to 
Washington to take the oath of office as President of the 
United States. There was half a century’s sleeping friend- 
ship back of the appointment which Mr. Wilson made some 
few months later when he named Justice Lamar on the In- 
ternational Commission, which met on the Canadian side, 
at Niagara Falls, to adjust our differences with Mexico. Did 
these lads, when they played on the commons of Augusta 
or debated in the old Lamar attic, ever dream of what the 
future was to bring to pass ?* 


* Hon. Wm. H. Fleming, afterwards a member of Congress from the 10th (Ga.) Dis- 
trict, and Hon. Pleasant A. Stovall, afterwards minister to Switzerland, were lads 
of the same neighborhood and early friends of the future President. 


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THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 41 


Next, in 1870, the family removed to Columbia, S. C., 
where Joseph R. Wilson became a professor in the Columbia 
Theological Seminary; and there we find an uncle of the 
President, Dr. James Woodrow, long a towering landmark of 
Calvinism in the South, but an independent thinker, as were 
all the Woodrows. He was both an educator and an editor.* 
Some of his opinions, it must be remarked, were in advance 
of his times, especially on the much discussed subject of 
evolution. He became the central figure of a famous trial 
for heresy; buf he left the impress of his intellectual power 
upon the generation in which he lived, and today the memory 
of no man is more revered. 

Not only in Augusta, but in Columbia, young Wilson was 
brought in immediate touch with the distressing realities 
of war. The former city was saved from destruction, only 
by the skillful maneuvers of General Wheeler, who was by 
birth an Augustan. The Carolina capital fell a prey to Gen- 
eral Sherman’s torch and was still partially in ashes when 
the Wilson family went there to reside in 1870. The next 
shifting of residence was to Wilmington, N. C., some few 
years later. Thus far, young Wilson’s education was de- 
rived chiefly from tutors in the towns above named, each 
of them in a different state of the union. 

But the President always said that it was chiefly to his 
father that he was indebted for his best instruction. This 
was specially true of the lessons which made him a master 
in the art of English expression. The elder Wilson abhorred 
what the rhetoricians call ambiguity, nor was he addicted to 
persiflage, or loitering by the way. His style was direct and 
simple, and he used no redundant phrases. Moreover, a man 
of great reserve power, he believed in suppressed emotion. 
In this respect, the father was a criterion—a model—whom 
the son was proudly content to follow. It was, therefore, 
with keen satisfaction to Mr. Wilson that the old doctor one 
day, after reading his son’s life of the first President, closed 


*Edited The Southern Presbyterian, Columbia, S. C. Dr. Woodrow was also a 
banker and a man of practical affairs. 


42 WOODROW WILSON 


the book with this remark: ‘Well, Woodrow, I am glad 
that you let George Washington do his own dying.”’+ 

From Wilmington, young Wilson, in the fall of 1873 went 
to Davidson College, N. C., an institution of high rank, con- 
trolled by Southern Presbyterians. But a period of ill- 
health interrupted his studies, and his stay at Davidson was 
short, and there was a whole year spent at home. In the 
fall of 1875, he entered Princeton. Here the Calvinism of 
America centered. Here the great intellects of the church 
lived and taught. Moreover, there was here a body of tradi- 
tions, reaching back to some of the most dramatic scenes 
of the Revolution. Here was Nassau Hall, with its thrilling 
memories of the Continental Congress and of the great 
John Witherspoon. Here was the historic battle-ground of 
Princeton; and on every hand there were glorious memen- 
toes of an unforgotten Past. The environment was well cal- 
culated to widen his area of vision, and to feed his Ameri- 
canism. But the ideals of Mr. Wilson remained essentially 
Southern. They were rooted in the soil and nurtured by 
the climate of the lower latitudes. Golden words in his 
ripe vocabulary were “self-determination” and ‘“‘self-gov- 
ernment.” There was nothing sectional or sinister, how- 
ever, in Woodrow Wilson’s ideals. They involved the widest 
of horizons; but underlying them was home-rule. At the 
great Peace Table he stood the champion of this principle, 
boldly asserted and vigorously upheld. Unconsciously, he 
was here in training for world-leadership. Residence amid 
such scenes, at a point midway between the sections, also 
helped to make him an impartial historian, equally fair to 
both sides. 


* Dr. Stockton Axson’s sketch of Woodraw Wilson in the Library of the Southern Lit- 
erature, Vol. XIII. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 43 


Il. PREPARATION. 





IN the preceding chapter, we have already anticipat- 
ed a part of the President’s preparation. Entering 
Princeton College, he was here in touch with the 
spirits of his destiny, and almost at once the ideals 
which were to govern him began to assume definite form and 
color. These same academic scenes were to furnish the 
arena for his approaching combats—were to witness 
some fierce encounters—when, as a Vigorous young execu- 
tive, he was to institute his first reforms and to win his 
premier laurels. In view of what the years were to bring 
forth, his life at Princeton, even in its under-graduate days, 
acquires a fascinating interest. It was full of prophetic 
elements. 

But the future in all probability gave him no intimation 
of its secret. Public service was his earliest goal, and 
naturally his maiden ambitions inclined him to the pro- 
fession of law. He became at once a leader, but it was not 
within the strict lines of the curriculum that he sought to 
excel. The tread-mill of routine he found irksome, because 
there were studies which he did not relish. If he may be 
said to have had a hobby at this time, it was British polli- 
tics. Gladstone was his favorite hero, and, in the home 
circle affairs across the water often furnished the staple of 
conversation. Thus he began life with a wide horizon. 
Making the science of government his special field of study, 
he continued his researches at Princeton. He sought to as- 
certain the exact points of divergence between the Federal 
and the English Constitutions, with the result that in 1879 
he contributed to the International Review an extraordinary 
article, which not only became famous in college annals, but 
evoked thoughtful comment beyond the campus. 





It was entitled ‘Cabinet Government in the United 
States,” and, for a youth of twenty-two, was a master-piece, 


44 WOODROW WILSON 


dealing with the profundities of law and with the basic 
principles of the American commonwealth. As a critical 
essay, it equalled anything produced by Macaulay, and was 
both original and brilliant. Mr. Wilson undertook to show 
wherein a strong cabinet, with fixed responsibilities, might 
prove an effective link between the executive and the legis- 
lative departments. We dwell on it here because, in the light 
of his subsequent career as a world-statesman, it is strange- 
ly prophetic—startling in its intimations of the coming 
leader of men. 


Besides reflecting a mature acquaintance with European 
politics, it set forth, even this early in life, certain definite 
principles which were destined to become his fixed stars. 
He deplored not only the laxity, but the tyranny of com- 
mittee-rooms, in which beneficent and wise legislation was 
often throttled. These to him savored of the Star Cham- 
ber of the Stuarts—suggested even those rooms in the 
Tower of London, in which the young princes were murder- 
ed. There was not enough discussion in either House. Free- 
dom of debate, in the broad open, was to him of the very es- 
sence of liberty and it offered the most effective mode of 
educating public opinion. Forty years later, at the Peace 
Table, we find him maintaining these same principles, with 
unyielding tenacity and with consummate power of argu- 
ment. 


Editing the college paper, called “The Princetonian,” he 
found congenial exercise for his pen, back of which lay an 
active brain, well stored with facts. But we cannot linger. 
The views expressed by the under-graduate furnished in 
essence the staple for a later work entitled “Congressional 
Government,” which became a text-book in many leading 
colleges and universities, and was destined to pass through 
twenty editions before Mr. Wilson’s death. It was the be- 
ginning of his career as a man of letters—as a writer of 
books, chiefly on politico-historial subjects. He was never 
an antiquarian, in the restricted sense of this term. He loved 
the past not for its dead bones, but for its vital teachings. 


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THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 45 


It was the spirit of learning, not its fossiliferous remains 
that fired the enthusiasm and challenged the loyalty of this 
rare scholar. Witness his writings; and whether it be the 
Life of Washington or the History of the United States,” 
we find that he was no worshiper at the shrine of buried 
antiquities, but a devotee of the living truth. 





This incident of Mr. Wilson’s student life is characteristic, 
showing that even in the mimic-battles of the college forum, 
he was unwilling to argue against his settled convictions. On 
one occasion, he was chosen to represent the Whig society 
in a joint debate, with its rival, the Cliosophic. It was to be 
an impromptu affair, on a subject to be picked at random 
from a number of slips cast into a hat. The Tariff was drawn, 
and it fell to Wilson to uphold Protection. But he was a 
Free-Trader, out and out, and rather than masquerade in 
a set of opinions which he did not hold, though perhaps 
the readiest debater in college, he declined the contest. 

It may be said in this connection that Wilson, in his under- 
graduate efforts, did not affect the florid style, habitual to 
amateur debaters. He was never sophomoric or grandilo- 
quent. He eschewed the flambeau. Melodramatic thunder 
and lightning he left to others. He preferred the sounder, 
if less showy, processes of logic. In after life, he was the 
storm-center of many a stirring scene, in which all the ele- 
ments of the drama were present; but he was far from cul- 
tivating stage-effects. Outwardly, at least, he maintained 
an unruffled calm. Grim, resourceful, unyielding, he was 
the field-marshal of argument ;—not a Mirabeau nor a Hot- 
spur. 





In 1879, Wilson received his diploma from Princeton, with 
the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The next two years found 
him at the University of Virginia, where he studied law, 
under the renowned Dr. Minor. It is of record that, true to 
his English admirations, he here wrote an article on Glad- 


46 WOODROW WILSON 


stone and pronounced an oration on John Bright. Early in 
1882 he returned to Georgia, expecting to make the wide- 
awake city of Atlanta his home and to spend his life in the 
South. But a higher providence willed it otherwise. 


Admitted to the Georgia bar, under the distinguished 
Judge George Hillyer, he immediately formed a partnership 
with Edward I. Rennick, an ambitious suitor, like himself, 
at the shrine of the legal profession, eager to catch the 
smile of Dame Fortune. They opened an office in the old 
Hulsey building, on Marietta street, at its intersection with 
Broad. But there were no halos to distinguish these young 
barristers, as men set apart. What the future held in store 
for them was still upon the knees of the gods. To quote 
Mr. Wilson’s own language, they “wore out the carpet,” 
waiting for clients; and such a state of affairs, while con- 
ducive to philosophy, was fatal to advancement along ma- 
terial lines and offered no solution to a problem in which 
the Almighty Dollar was a factor. Consequently the part- 
nership was dissolved. It is a singular circumstance that 
the old law office, in after years, became a station for re- 
eruits in the Marine Corps, and played its part in the great 
world drama. 


Young Rennick’s career, after leaving Atlanta, was even 
more strikingly brilliant than his law partner’s, in its im- 
mediate achievements, and except for his early death his 
fame might likewise have become international. Proceed- 
ing to Washington, he was soon afterwards made an assist- 
ant Secretary of State, under President Cleveland. Later, 
he went to France as special agent for the great banking 
house of Cotdert Bros., there executing also certain diplo- 
matic commissions for the United States government. At 
one time he represented the Goulds. But his early death 
in the city of Paris ended a career of rare promise; and, on 
both sides of the Atlantic, there were many to mourn the 
eclipse of his splendid possibilities. 





Mr. Wilson, with his small financial balance, decided to 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 47 


take a post-graduate course at Johns Hopkins. According- 
ly he went to Baltimore. Obtaining a fellowship in history, 
he later earned a Ph. D. degree, submitting for a thesis his 
work entitled, “Congressional Government,” which, in a 
somewhat expanded form, contained the ideas which he ad- 
vanced as an under-graduate, and which is still one of the 
most popular of all his publications. It was first as a teach- 
er that he was to carve his way upwards. In 1885, he 
joined the faculty of Bryn Mawr, a noted college for wom- 
en, then newly established in the environs of Philadelphia. 
History and Political Economy were the branches which he 
here began to teach. 

To cite only a single incident of Mr. Wilson’s sojourn in 
Atlanta, the following anecdote is narrated by Mr. Henry 
C. Peeples. Some time after his arrival here, the Tariff 
Commission, appointed by President Hayes to visit the dif- 
ferent sections came to Atlanta and sent out invitations 
asking any one interested to meet them and to point out 
what they considered unjust discriminations. Judge John 
W. H. Underwood, of Rome, an ex-member of Congress, was 
the Georgia member of this commission. When the board 
assembled in convention at the Kimball House, it was greet- 
ed by a tall, slender young man, who came alone to discuss 
the tariff. He was the sole individual to appear, in response 
to the board’s invitation. For more than two hours, he 
fired question after question, at the tariff experts, turning 
the inquiry after evidence into a debate between himself and 
the board, showing these visitors exactly what the situation 
was in the South. Moved to astonishment by the informa- 
tion, almost encyclopedic, which this lank youth seemed to 
possess, one of the commissioners asked: 

“What is your name, young man?” 

“Woodrow Wilson,” he quietly answered, “a lawyer.” 

Having at length an assured income, young Wilson’s 
fancy, hitherto fettered, now “lightly turned to thoughts of 
love.” While a resident of Georgia, he made the acquaint- 
ance of a gifted young lady, of whom he immediately be- 


48 WOODROW WILSON 


came enamored. This was Miss Ellen Louise Axson, whose 
father, the Rev. S. E. Axson, was then pastor of the First 
Presbyterian church, of Rome. It was while on a visit to 
one of his own relatives that the delightful romance began; 
and here at the meeting place of the waters, a region fully. 
as picturesque as Moore’s “Vale of Avoca,” they plighted 
troth. As a sequel to the happy courtship, this beautiful 
Rome girl was to become the First Lady of the Land. But 
the nuptials were postponed until the means of an adequate 
support were provided. 


Meanwhile Woodrow Wilson proceeded to Baltimore, 
while his bride-to-be went to New York, there to study art 
under the reigning masters. It may be said in this con- 
nection that the first Mrs. Wilson was a gifted artist, and 
that a number of rare pictures bear testimony to her un- 
usual talent. However, the period of waiting was now at 
an end. On June 24, 1885, the happy pair were united. 
But the bride having lost her father by death, the marriage 
took place in Savannah, at the home of her grandfather, 
the noted Dr. I. S. K. Axson, long pastor of the old Inde- 
pendent Presbyterian church, of that city, and a man of very 
great distinction. Hon. Lee J. Langley, of Rome, now a 
member of the Georgia legislature, thus charmingly tells 
the story of the Wilson courtship. Says he: 


Discouraged (over the situation in Atlanta) he came to Rome to 
visit his aunt, Mrs. J. W. Bones. He called his visit a two-month’s 
vacation, but he went back to Atlanta for his typewriter and returned 
to Rome to do copying in a hardware store largely owned by the 
Bones family. In the early stages of his visit he saw Miss Ellen 
Louise Axson in the church of which her father was pastor, was 
fascinated with her brown-eyed beauty and asked his cousin, Miss 
Jessie Bones, to introduce him to the pretty Rome girl after the 
sermon. The attachment between the young people was instantly 
observed, and Mrs. Brower, a cousin of the late president, looked with 
approval on the friendship of the young pair and found she could do 
her Atlanta cousin a good turn, so proposed that they invite Miss 
Axson and several others to go on a picnic, east of Lindale, to a 
Spring which forms part of the headwaters of Silver Creek. The 
meeting place was at the Brower home, and when young Woodrow 





FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF ROME 


Rev. S. E. Axson, father 


Wilson, was for many years 


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THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 49 


asked if he hadn’t better take some lunch, Miss Ellen Lou readily 
suggested that she had plenty for two, and this offer left no room for 
argument. The distance was eight or nine miles, and two rigs were 
used; the more attractive of the two for the young folks was Colonel 


Brower’s wagon with side seats in which plenty of straw had been 
piled. 


’Tis said Woodrow and Ellen Lou chose the back of the wagon that 
they might dangle their feet behind, and away went the future 
President of the United States and the future First Lady of the Land, 
caring little whether school kept or law was productive of fees. 

After bumping along country roads for an hour and a half they 
arrived at the picnic ground. The lisping of the gentle waters and the 
droning of the bees in a nearby field of wild flowers furnished the 
rhythmic tremulo for the young lawyer’s love sonata, and they soon 
strayed off from the crowd. Lunch time came and all were summoned 
to the well-filled baskets. All save two were ravenously hungry after 
a session of romping and wading. These two were industriously 
searching for four-leaf clovers on the pasture greensward; playing 
“Love me, love me not” with flower petals; blowing the downy tops 
off dandelion stems. 


“IT wonder where Ellen Lou and Woodrow can be?” asked Mrs. 
Brower as if aware of nothing. 


“T know,” piped one of the children, “he’s over there cutting a heart 
on a beech tree!” 

On June 24, 1885, Woodrow Wilson and Ellen Louise Axson were 
married in Savannah. On August 6, 1914, as the nation’s chief execu- 
tive and faced by a world enflamed with passion and torn asunder 
with hatreds, as a grief stricken husband he followed the sweetheart 
of his childhood from the White Hiouse to Rome to lay her body to 
rest. Facing the Axson lot, where the great war president stood 
broken hearted was the two-story frame dwelling where he paid 
his first visit to Ellen Axson and beyond the hill nestled the picnic 
ground, where he had taken his first outing with her and Silver 


Creek was running a love song as old as the hills that stud its 
borders. 


This dainty love story is here given, because in the forty 
years which followed, Mrs. Wilson’s quiet influence was a 
powerful factor in her husband’s phenomenal success. The 
First Lady of the Land was preparing to make a visit to 
the home of her girlhood, in 1914, when her death occurred. 
It was to be home-coming week in Rome, Ga., and there was 


wh ARP es WOODROW WILSON 


a touch of tender pathos in the scene at the depot, when, 
at the time of her burial, a bed of violets now traced the 
letters: ‘‘Welcome Home.”* 


Three children were born of this happy wedlock: Mar- 
garet Woodrow, who still remains unmarried, a gifted mu- 
sician, whose reputation is international and whose songs 
in camp, while a volunteer for duty in France, lifted the 
heart of many a soldier; Jessie Woodrow, now Mrs. Sayre, 
a woman of rare executive capacity, who was a great help 
to her father in his early campaigns, holding also a member- 
ship, in the Phi Beta Kappa; and Eleanor Randolph, the 
youngest, now Mrs. McAdoo, whose husband was Secretary 
of the Treasury, in her father’s cabinet, when her marriage 
occurred, and who was the engineer of the great tunnels un- 
der the Hudson. She inherits her mother’s rare gift as an 
artist. Two of the girls, Margaret and Jessie, were born 
at Gainesville, Ga., where Mrs. Wilson was a frequent visitor 
at the home of her aunt, Mrs. Brown. 

Next, in 1888, Mr. Wilson was called to Middletown, Conn., 
where he taught in Wesleyan University the same branches 
which he taught at Bryn Mawr; and here he is said to have 
gained a grip on student life and opinion which ever after- 
‘wards marked his career as an educator.+ His reputation 
continued to grow. He was recognized as an authority on 
both sides of the water, chiefly because of his analysis of 
governmental procedure in America. Here he published 
another work which gave proof of his rare critical and re- 
flective powers. This was a review of Bryce’s “American 
Commonwealth.” It not only enlarged his circle of readers, 
but incidentally won him the friendship of the great English 
diplomat and statesman. Within two years, there came the 
call to Princeton. It rang like the blast of a bugle, clear 
and distinct, and it sounded an imperative summons. 


*In the heart of the city of Rome, Ga., there stands a monument to the women of 
the Confederacy, one of the first memorials of this kind—if not indeed the very 
first—to be erected anywhere in the South. It was dedicated June 3, 1910, the 
birthday of President Davis. One of the inscriptions on the monument came 
from the pen of Woodrow Wilson, afterwards the twenty-eighth President of the 
United States. Mr. Wilson, who was then in his last year at Princeton, was on 
the eve of his nomination as Governor of New Jersey. This is the inscription, 
a charmingly worded tribute to the Southern women of the Sixties: 


“To the Women of the Confederacy, whose fidelity, whose purity, 
whose courage, whose gentle genius in love and in counsel, kept the 
home secure, the family a school of virtue, the state a court of honor; 
who made of war a season of heroism and of peace a time of healing; 
the guardian of our tranquility and of our strength.” 


~ W. E. Dodd, in the Americans for 1923. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 51 


IV. PRINCETON. 





OW begins a new chapter. In 1890, Woodrow Wil- 

son entered the faculty at Princeton. It was an 
event on which all the story of the future was to 
hang. For, not only was he to become the institu- 
tion’s head, but, after years of study devoted to the powers 
of the executive, its obligations and its duties, he was to be- 
come, first, Governor of New Jersey, and then President of 
the United States. So meteoric was the rise of this new 
light in the political heavens—so unusual was it for a 
““school-master’” to make such a leap—that the narrative 
becomes one of fascinating interest, and each item of the 
day’s docket is made significant because of its ultimate bear- 
ing upon American history. Mr. Wilson taught the same 
branches as heretofore; but in 1895 his title was changed 
to Professor of Jurisprudence and in 1897 to Professor of 
Jurisprudence and Politics. His lectures were the most 
popular of the whole institution, for he discussed not only 
basic principles of government, but current happenings and 
political events of the day. Though he brought to Princeton 
an established reputation, his prestige continued to grow. 
Wake Forest College, N. C., was the first institution to 
make him an LL. D. But Tulane, Johns Hopkins, Rutgers, 
Pennsylvania University, Harvard and Yale followed suit; 
and then at last came degrees from the great fountain seats 
of learning in Europe, and tribute honors from Kings and 
Emperors. 


Gifted as a public speaker, he was found to possess, even 
at this early day, qualities which made him most attrac- 
tive to public assemblies, and many wondered why he chose 
to bury in the obscure gown of a teacher of youth talents 
which fitted him for the forum. Little could they foresee 
coming events. Steadily Mr. Wilson advanced, taking a 
lead in the institution’s expansion along broad university 


Ny 


SSS 


52 WOODROW WILSON 


lines. He became the idol of the students, wrote articles 
for the magazines, delivered lectures over the country, added 
to the volumes already published, and became, in fact, ‘“‘the 
bright, particular star of Princeton,” but known, of course, 
chiefly in educational circles. Consequently, he was the 
man to whom the alumni looked—on whom the Board of 
Trustees kept an eye. 


In 1902, Dr. Francis L. Patton resigned the presidency of 
Princeton, and to succeed him Woodrow Wilson was elected 
—Princeton’s first lay president. We pause here to note 
that, at this time, the chairman of the Board of Trustees 
was Grover Cleveland. Thus, in the affairs of Princeton, 
there began to mingle these two names of talismanic power. 
Nor is it without arrestive significance that the only two 
Democratic Presidents since the Civil war were in this man- 
ner connected with Princeton, giving to this seat of learn- 
ing a somewhat unique prestige among American colleges. 
Historic old William and Mary, however, on the peninsular 
of Virginia, still holds the record as a mother of Presidents. 

Executive duties were now, for the first time, thrust 
upon Mr. Wilson, whose title of address, during these acade- 
mic days was invariably “Doctor.” He was now to prove 
his ability as an administrator and to qualify himself for 
those Herculean tasks which lay further on. Be it known 
that a great university is a kingdom within itself, or a re- 
public, if that term be preferred; it is an entity which con- 
tains all the elements of an empire; important enough to 
have its foreign and its domestic policies. It is betraying no 
secret to say that when Mr. Wilson came to the helm 
of affairs, Princeton was reckoned a college for rich men’s 
sons. The charge was widely proclaimed. Even Dr. Pat- 
ton is said to have admitted this much in a futile effort to 
stem the current. But the spirit of a modern reformer lay 
dormant in the breast of this untried new executive, who was 
not afraid to face difficult problems. It was the very exer- 
cise required for his powers. Heavy dumb-bells are needed 
in the gymnasium of a giant. Without delay, he began to 
institute reforms. His popularity was now threatened. 


Soljysia AyIvO 94} Ul SUOSXW OY} Jo OULOY OYA Sem 4I ‘UOSTIAA ‘SapT JO TOUIeT ey} Aq Ing 
ASNVW HANOYU AHL 








THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 53 


First, it was the standard of scholarship which he sought 
to uplift. This he proposed to do by means of a system, 
called the Elective Group. During the first two years a 
student was required to take the prescribed studies with- 
out deviation. But, after making the junior class, he was 
allowed a certain latitude of choice, and could choose cer- 
tain studies, provided he let the faculty choose the others, 
thus forming a group. In this way, a vital choice, mean- 
ing much to the student’s future life, was put under the 
control of maturer minds, and not left entirely to the whims 
of the student, with unformed views and opinions. Until 
this change was brought about, Princeton was dubbed a 
Castle of Indolence, entered and closed by means of a gold- 
en key,—a veiled reference, of course, to the money bags. 
Most of the students were not lifters, but leaners, depend- 
ent upon the industry of the few for notes and outlines, 
which ‘poled’ on the eve of examinations, put them 
easily and safely beyond the Rubicon. The group system 
registered a distinct advance along educational lines. The 
experiment was watched, and its success demonstrated. 


Next, Mr. Wilson launched the preceptorial system. In- 
formal lectures he felt to be inadequate, since they carried 
no control over students to make them take notes. His 
plan for correcting this evil is described as a blending of two 
other systems into one; the English Tutor and the German 
Seminar. In an issue of the Forum, for 1894, soon after 
coming to Princeton, Mr. Wilson published an article in 
which the essential features of his system were discussed. 
Under the plan proposed, a number of units were formed, 
and each student was brought into close and intimate touch 
with a teacher, whose duty it was to lead small groups of 
men, to direct them in their studies, to help them over their 
difficulties, to inspire them with a zeal for learning, and to 
give them an introduction to the world of letters. Definite 
progress was observed. So satisfactory were the results 
that a witty graduate is reported to have said that, if Dr. 
Wilson kept on, he would eventually make Princeton an edu- 


54 WOODROW WILSON 


cational institution.* It was a significant comment. Re- 
marked another critic: “It cannot be doubted that his in- 
fluence did much to check the tendency of American educa- 
tion to concentrate upon the mere mint and cummin of 
scholarship, to the exclusion of its essence and spirit.”+ It 
cost something to put these changes into effect. But Mr. 
Wilson went before the alumni. Everywhere he met with 
pronounced encouragement, his popularity increased and 
his sphere of influence became wider. 





But the next move encountered opposition, strenuous and 
stubborn. It was not so difficult a matter to raise stand- 
ards of scholarship. Everyone recognized its necessity and 
its wisdom; and there was no divided sentiment on the sub- 
ject. But to make war to the knife on social habits and 
customs which had acquired a deep rootage was quite a dif- 
ferent proposition, and it stirred the life of Princeton to its 
profoundest depths; it created enmities and_ inflicted 
wounds the scars of which remain to this day. 


Central to the life of Princeton were the clubs. These 
were not the Greek letter societies, abolished in the seven- 
ties, but eating clubs. They were dominated by the upper 
classmen, who were also “of the upper crust’; in other 
words, they were ruled by wealthy young aristocrats. Some 
of them were housed in palatial buildings, and were often the 
scenes of a gaiety, inconsistent with the serious pursuit of 
learning. To make the clubs became the great desideratum, 
more important than all the honors of the class-room, or 
even of the athletic field; and failure to reach the coveted 
goal meant inferiority if not ostracism. 

Such a condition of affairs did not comport with the at- 
mosphere of a place, whose traditions ran back to the im- 
mortal protest of freedom, in which the great doctrine of 
human equality was so boldly asserted by Jefferson and so 
bravely underwritten by Witherspoon. To Mr. Wilson, it 


* Dr. W. E. Dodd’s article in the Americana, 1928. 
+ William Archer in “The Peace President’, p. 33. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 55 


was all wrong, not only undemocratic, but demoralizing and 
pernicious. It was a malady which called for surgical he- 
roics. To apply the leveling process, he went to the root of 
the evil; he sought to eradicate these invidious social dis- 
tinctions, and to adapt the ‘‘Quad”’ system of the old aN 
universities to the social life of Princeton. 


It was in 1907 that Mr. Wilson brought forward his rem- 
edy for the existing evil. He proposed to make the quad- 
rangle central to the institution’s life—to carry the precep- 
torial system one step further. Briefly stated, his plan was 
this:* To build dormitories in which all the students 
should live together, on a plane of equality; to have an as- 
signment of rooms by lot; to have a common dining-hall, in 
which rich and poor should gather at the same boards; 
to locate this dining-hall near the quadrangle; and to pro- 
vide a system of rotation by which unmarried tutors should 
live in the dormitories with the students, incidentally to 
enforce discipline, but ultimately to elevate the standards 
and to implant the new ideals. It was an application to stu- 
dent life at Princeton of the principles of democracy, a pro- 
posed change, both radical and drastic. Some of the trus- 
tees were not enthusiastic; but under the president’s per- 
suasive power of appeal, they consented to make the experi- 
ment. Things looked well enough, until the governing pow- 
ers of the institution began to hear from the alumni, to 
whom the students now appealed. Many of these were 
recent graduates; not a few of them were men of wealth, 
in the affections of whom the clubs were deeply entrenched. 
Then followed a campaign, the intensity of which was re- 
flected in the board meetings, in the faculty, on the streets 
and at the social firesides of Princeton. Mr. Wilson found 
his difficulties hourly increasing. 





Thus matters stood when new issues were injected. The 
power of the purse began to make itself felt. Gifts of large 


56 WOODROW WILSON 


amounts were proffered, but these were made contingent 
upon what was tantamount to a rejection of the Wilson plans. 
Over a proposed gift of $250,000 to the graduate school, 
made by William C. Proctor, of Cincinnati, conditioned 
upon the raising of a similar sum, there arose an Ephesian 
tumult. Dean West, though formerly a close friend to Mr. 
Wilson, desired to locate the new building at a distance from 
the quadrangle, which, in the Wilson scheme of develop- 
ment, was the central feature of the university system. The 
gift was to be administered by the dean, but, on account of 
the strings attached, Mr. Wilson refused to accept the gift, 


and in this position he was reluctantly upheld by the 
trustees. 


But the clubs remained. At the peak of the fight, Mr. 
Wilson made a number of speeches in which his Princeton 
critics charged him with exploiting his presidential pros- 
pects. “Junketing for the Presidency” was a phrase coined 
at this time, but Mr. Wilson was only seeking to crystallize 
sentiment in favor of his reforms. The fact that he now 
began to attract the attention of the nation to his bold fight 
for democracy is significant enough. Many were eager 
for his resignation and were ready to_help him to any office 
if it only created a vacancy in the president’s chair at Prince- 
ton. It was at this time that he broke with Grover Cleve- 
land. Mr. David Lawrence has preserved the incident, tell- 
ing how Dr. Van Dyke, who was at first opposed to the 
Wilson policies, became one of the most ardent supporters 
of Mr. Wilson, who, appreciating a delicate service which the 
latter had done him, requited the favor in 1913 when he 
made Dr. Van Dyke Minister to the Netherlands. Says Mr. 
Lawrence :* | 


The bitterness of the “Quad” dispute persisted and almost 
the same lines of cleavage developed in the faculty and the 
alumni and the board of trustees. Grover Cleveland had been 
elected a member of the board of trustees shortly after he took 


* Geo. H. Doran & Co., of New York, own the copyright of Mr. Lawrence’s series of 
articles. 





—Rose and Son, Princeton 


THE GRADUATE SCHOOL 


Showing also the impressive Cleveland Tower, named in honor of 
President Grover Cleveland, who lies buried at Princeton 





THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM Di 


up his residence in Princeton. Dean Andrew F. West, of the 
graduate school, was instrumental in bringing Mr. Cleveland 
to live in Princeton. They were fast friends. As next-door 
neighbors they saw a good deal of each other. Dean West was 
Dr. Wilson’s principal opponent. Grover Cleveland imbibed 
many of Dean West’s ideas, in fact, Mr. Cleveland was a member 
of the special committee of the board of trustees charged with 
the problem of planning a greater graduate school. Woodrow 
Wilson as presiding officer of the board of trustees had occa- 
sion more than once to clash with Mr. Cleveland. At one his- 
toric meeting Mr. Cleveland delivered a bitter attack on Dr. 
Wilson’s proposals. Dr. Wilson stood for a minute with flash- 
ing eyes, but controlled the temper within him. 


“You will live to regret what you have said,” he remarked 
bluntly and turned to the discussion of other matters. 


When Grover Cleveland died in the summer of 1908, Woodrow 
Wilson was in Europe on a bicycling trip through England 
and Scotland. On his return in the autumn, there was a noticeable 
omission of any reference in Dr. Wilson’s speech at the opening 
of the university to the death of Grover Cleveland. Nor did he 
order memorial exercises. It caused talk. It was characteristic 
of Woodrow Wilson. He lavished no praise where at heart 
he felt he could sincerely give none. He rarely, if ever, men- 
tioned Grover Cleveland in public addresses. 


Although Mr. Cleveland was the last president of the United 
States who had been elected on the Democratic ticket, and 
although the latter retained a large measure of popularity with 
the Democrats of the nation, Woodrow Wilson never sought to 
win the Cleveland Democrats as a legatee of Princeton affilia- 
tions. 


Only once did Woodrow Wilson fear that his relationship with 
Grover Cleveland might work to his disadvantage politically. 
Grover Cleveland had written a letter to Dr. Henry Van Dyke, 
then professor of English literature in Princeton university, de- 
nouncing Dr. Wilson and calling him a man of “an ungovern- 
able temper.” The Republican strategists in 1912 tried hard 
to get possession of that letter hoping to have it published 
so as to wean away the Cleveland followers in the Democratic 
party and as an index of the Wilson character. 


Dr. Henry Van Dyke never gave up the letter. Woodrow Wilson 
and Dr. Van Dyke had had some differences of opinion on the 
graduate school question, but Dr. Van Dyke refused to be a party 
in Governor Wilson’s political downfall. On the contrary he 


58 WOODROW WILSON 


support of Governor Wilson’s candidacy for the presidency of 
was one of the first of the Princeton group to come out in 
the United States. Woodrow Wilson never forgot that. He 
later chose Henry Van Dyke to be minister of the United States 
to the Netherlands, a post at which he acquitted himself with 


particular skill in the trying days of neutrality from 1914 to 
1917. 


However, the rejection of the Proctor gift did not end 
the fight. In 1910, Isaac Wyman, of Boston, died, leaving 
to the graduate school a legacy estimated at $3,000,000. 
Under the terms of the will, Dean West was to be one of 
its executors. Dazzling dreams of expansion were now 
kindled. But, in the eyes of Mr. Wilson, these golden shek- 
els did not glisten. The loftly ideals which he cherished for 
Princeton out-weighed them all. But the trustees began to 
weaken, and under pressure brought to bear upon them by 
the alumni they finally took sharp issue with Mr. Wilson 
and by an emphatic vote agreed to accept the monumental 
gift. Bitter beyond measure was the hostility felt toward 
Mr. Wilson by some of the alumni, especially in New York, 
where the once popular president, whose appearance was al- 
ways the signal for an ovation, was now greeted with a frost 
as withering as ever presaged a winter. 

His plans thwarted, Mr. Wilson felt that his work at 
Princeton was forever at an end. He was ready to vacate 
the president’s chair, when something happened. Another 
opportunity knocked. It was at this crisis that he was sum- 
moned by the New Jersey Democracy to become its standard 
bearer in the coming campaign for Governor. The way was 
opening for a wider sphere of usefulness. He was now to 
enter the arena of politics. His resignation followed in due 
course of events;—in fact on the heels of his nomination. 
He retired, after all, in a blaze of triumph. During the two 
years in which he filled the Governor’s chair, Mr. Wilson 
continued to reside in Princeton, but so pronounced were the 
old lines of division and so lingering the irritations born of 
a fight so bitter that painful memories remained. Mr. Wilson 
still cherished an abiding love for the great institution of 
learning, but into the social life of Princeton he never enter- 
ed again; and destiny soon afterwards called him to partici- 
pate in far more thrilling and historic scenes. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 59 


V. GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY. 





HILE the battle for a principle was waging on the 
campus at Princeton, the whole country was looking 
on; it was evident that a great Democrat had arisen, 
and with feverish interest, North and South, mil- 

lions of people awaited the issue of events. Mr. Wilson be- 

came a national figure. This time, it was not in an educa- 
tional, but in a political sense that his fame was growing. 

It often happens that the frenzy of our very enemies, in- 

stead of crushing us to the earth, only serves to lift us to 

undreamed-of victories. Everywhere Mr. Wilson was pro- 
claimed the man of the hour. 


It was on the eve of commencement, in the summer of 
1910, that the great Wyman gift was announced on the 
campus. The irony of fate seemed to be laughing. Instinc- 
tively every one knew that it was Mr. Wilson’s last com- 
mencement, as the official head of the institution. In de- 
clining the Proctor gift, he had been sustained by the trust- 
ees, after a hard fight, but there was no hope of success for 
any resistance which he might offer to a legacy of $3,000,- 
000, it mattered not how many strings might be attached 
thereto. When Mr. Wilson appeared on the platform in 
Alexander Hall, it was the signal for a great ovation. Tears 
sprang to his eyes, as hundreds of his boys gathered about 
the old president, to bid him “bood-bye,” with a warm hand- 
clasp of affection. The air was already electrical with the 
name of Wilson as the time for the Trenton convention ap- 
proached. 








One of the staunchest friends of Mr. Wilson at this time 
was George Harvey, editor of Harper’s Weekly, who, long 
prior to 1910, was impressed with the Sage of Princeton as 
aman to whom the fates were calling. It was in the North 
American Review that he first called attention to the avail- 


60 WOODROW WILSON 


ability of Mr. Wilson, and even in 1908 he was among the 
“dark-horses” who were groomed for the White House. At 
another time, Colonel Harvey proposed him for the 
Federal toga, but the suggestion was made too early for any 
popular enthusiasm. Again, he was on the ground, when 
the convention met at Trenton. Representing the conserva- 
tive element of the country, he was advocating Mr. Wilson 
for the Democratic nomination in 1912. However, the im- 
patient Democracy of New Jersey refused to wait. The 
political situation might undergo a radical change in two 
years. At the helm of affairs in New Jersey, he was need- 
ed now. It is certain that the editor in question was by no 
means the only seer in Israel to whom the prescient gift was 
vouchsafed. ‘Thousands impressed by Mr. Wilson’s cour- 
age of conviction, without knowing anything of his power 
on the hustings, but familiar with his great battle for 
democracy at Princeton, saw and recognized in this man a 
“Daniel come to judgment.” 


But New Jersey’s action at this time gave him a still wider 
introduction. Not to mince matters, the state had long been 
dominated by the so-called “bosses.” It was the Paradise 
of the trusts—a by-word and a proverb, in this respect, 
throughout the Union. The convention which met at Tren- 
ton in the fall of 1910 was controlled by the reactionaries— 
men who favored the existing order of things, who were 
stand-patters in politics, opposed to any and all innovations. 
But this year they were eager for victory at the polls. So 
clamorous were the people for the Princeton school-master, 
that with Wilson to lead the hosts of Democracy, they 
were assured of triumph. 


Before such a rising tide, the bosses could only make the 
most of a situation which lay beyond the machine’s con- 
trol. Providence was taking a hand in the affairs of New 
Jersey, little as the bosses realized it at the time. They be- 
came acquiescent, foreseeing what was to happen. Since 
Mr. Wilson lacked experience, in the devious wiles of political 
intrigue, they reasoned that a neophyte so unsophisticated 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 61 


could be easily controlled, and that after he should take his 
seat in the Governor’s chair, it would then be in order to 
apply the thumb-screws. They even allowed the clever 
doctor to write his own platform, a progressive document 
from beginning to end, full of the dynamite which was to 
unseat bossism in New Jersey and to inaugurate reforms of 
which the most sanguine revolutionist never dared to dream. 
Moreover, with the explosion, a continent was destined to 
rock. 





But the bosses were not in the secret of the gods, and 
though riding to a sure downfall, they began to take a lead- 
ing part in the movement, as if, indeed, they were its benign 
authors. Whenever an explanation was sought, or a fling 
was made at them by the irate old doctor, they only looked 
wise and remarked: ““That’s only to catch votes. Just wait 
and watch.” Men in the convention voted for Wilson who 
were absolutely opposed to everything for which he stood. 
On the other hand, many who were his natural allies, in 
progressive reform, opposed him because of the auspices 
under which he was groomed for the Governorship—he was 
the candidate of the ring. It was a state of affairs wholly 
anomalous. The dominant figure of the convention was ex- 
United States Senator James Smith, Jr., who planned by 
this movement to wheel himself back into power. He even 
seconded the nomination of Mr. Wilson. But, “the best laid 
plans o’ mice and men, gang aft aglee.” One of the progres- 
sives, who opposed the Princeton man, in the Trenton con- 
vention was afterwards, by a strange caprice of fortune, to 
be his private secretary for eleven years. This was Joseph 
P. Tumulty, Jr., Says he:* 


“Ag I look back upon the great event of this convention, it seems 
that destiny was engaged there, working in mysterious ways its 
wonders to perform. Working, perhaps, through strange, incongruous 
instrumentalities, to bring the man of destiny into action, led by 
those who were at variance with everything for which Woodrow 
Wilson stood, opposed by those who were actually yearning for just 


62 WOODROW WILSON 


the dawn of political liberalism which his advent into politics heralded. 
It was an illustration of the poet’s line: ‘Where ignorant armies 
clash by night.” The successful side of the convention were fighting 
for what they least wanted; the defeated side for what they most 
wanted. Here, in this convention, were present in aggressive action 
the incongruities of politics.” 


Amidst a riot of enthusiasm, the college professor was 
nominated. When he came before the convention, an even 
greater storm burst forth. To secure the nomination, Mr. 
Wilson had not even crooked his finger, and except to the 
sovereign people of New Jersey, he stood before the great 
sea of delegates, unbound by trammels, to receive the De- 
mocracy’s proffered banner. 


During the campaign which followed, Woodrow Wilson 
proved a revelation. In the vernacular, “he astonished the 
natives.” He did not speak over the heads of people, but, 
with telling effect, “he shelled the woods.”’ Indeed, he paid 
his vitriolic respects to the very bosses who posed as his 
patrons, but who construed his allusions to themselves in a 
sense amusingly “Pickwickian.” They smiled, in spite of 
the storm of applause which greeted the good doctor’s 
merciless onslaughts. It was in the heat of this campaign 
that Mr. Wilson’s renowned phrase “pitiless publicity” was 
first coined, to ring in every nook and corner of the nation. 





To make a long story short, Wilson swept the field by a 
plurality of votes, little short of 50,000, thus winning to the 
Democracy a state which Mr. Taft two years before had 
carried by a majority of 82,000 votes. It was equivalent toa 
nomination by thunder to the highest office in the nation’s 
gift. It put Mr. Wilson into the running for the Presidency ; 
and at once the ever-resourceful McCombs, an old Princeton 
man, now a New York lawyer, began to organize his volun- 
teer bureau. But this is anticipating. Those who expected 
to find in the new Governor a man easy to control were soon 


* “Woodrow Wilson As I Knew Him’, by Joseph P. Tumulty, p. 16. Doubleday, Page 
GUCOGUN.  teeeale 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 63 


to experience a rude jolt and a sudden awakening. Woodrow 
Wilson was a Scotchman. He could not please all parties. 
So he broke first with Senator Smith and then with Colonel 
Harvey—both his antitheses in politics; but the latter rup- 
ture came much later. Turning Republican, the genial 
editor of Harper’s Weekly was afterwards sent to the Court 
of St. James by President Harding. 

At the general election for Governor, there was also a 
preferential primary held, to indicate the party’s choice for 
a United States Senator. This fell to James E. Martine, of 
Plainfield, N. J. But the bosses were not disturbed. They 
still expected James Smith to be named. They saw no bind- 
ing obligation in the primary vote; but they did not wish 
to see it;—it was only an intimation; and, with a Governor 
to obey the ring’s behest, it was something which could be 
safely ignored; it was not even a scrap of paper. 

But Wilson thought otherwise. Even before assuming 
office, he let the bosses know exactly where he stood, a 
thing which he endeavored to do, with every inflection of 
English, while the campaign was in progress. Not only did 
he feel bound by the declarations of the platform on which 
he was elected; but the plain mandate of the people was not 
to be disregarded. Some have been disposed to tax the New 
Jersey man with ingratitude. Indeed, the very air became 
electrical with charges to this effect. But Mr. Wilson owed 
a greater debt to the people than he did to the bosses, and 
in the light of the platform there was only one course to 
follow. It lay before him in the clear sunlight. He urged 
the Legislature to ratify the wishes of the people, as ex- 
pressed through the ballot box. James E. Martine, there- 
fore, was duly elected. 





Woodrow Wilson, like another Hercules, now proceeded 
to cleanse the Augean stables. He sought to crystalize into 
law every reform to which he stood pledged; and he suc- 
ceeded. This result he accomplished by assuming a bold 
leadership. He even appeared upon the scene when a cau- 


64 WOODROW WILSON 


cus was held, a thing unprecedented; but he felt it to be a 
part of his responsibility, and he invited questions to which 
he returned ready and effective answers. Thus he secured 
from the Democrats in the Legislature an endorsement of 
his whole program. When the Republican Senate was dis- 
posed to offer hindrances, he threatened to meet the balk- 
ing Senators face to face in the districts which they rep- 
resented and to air the records. It is needless to say that 
he brought them to terms. 

Among the outstanding achievements of the administra- 
tion were: (1) a Direct Primary Act; (2) an Employees 
Liability Act; (8) a measure regulating Public Utilities; 
and (4) a measure aimed at Corrupt Methods and Manipula- 
tions. If ever a candidate made good, it was Woodrow 
Wilson. He not only redeemed his promises, but carried the 
erusade of reform still further. More than ever, he was 
recognized as a possibility in the campaign which was fast 
approaching. All eyes were turned toward Trenton. The 
Republicans looked on in dismay. It was an unwonted 
spectacle. The power of the bosses was for once over- 
thrown; and if New Jersey had been a paradise of the trusts, 
it was for the present, at least, a ‘Paradise Lost.” 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 65 


VI. THE BALTIMORE CONVENTION 





T was written in the stars that the year 1912 was to 
VK be a Democratic year in national politics. The 
( break in the hitherto solid ranks of Republicanism 
was growing hourly wider, with the certainty of an 
overwhelming defeat for the Grand Old Party of Alexander 
Hamilton. It was now hydra-headed. President Taft and 
Colonel Roosevelt were the respective leaders of warring 
factions, which were not to be reconciled. The hopeful feel- 
ing which pervaded the Democracy was well voiced by an 
orator in the Baltimore convention: ‘We are here not sim- 
ply to nominate a candidate but to choose a President.” 


However, there were likewise breaches in the Democratic 
walls which, for a time, at least, were full of danger to the 
citadel. Early in the campaign, Mr. Wilson estranged the 
two Colonels—Colonel Harvey and Colonel Watterson, whom 
he met one day at the famous Manhattan Club, in New York. 

“Is my support hurting you, Mr. Wilson?” inquired the 
former. 

Returning an answer, in the utmost candor and without 
the least desire to offend, deeming an honest reply the only 
one to make, Mr. Wilson said: 

“TI think it is, Colonel Harvey, at least, in the East.” 

That was the upshot of the interview. There was not a 
sign of irritation displayed; but Colonel Harvey was deeply 
wounded. Wilson’s name was taken down from the mast- 
head of Harper’s Weekly, and it ceased to be kissed by the 
breezes of Kentucky, in Marse Henry’s Courier-Journal. 

Subsequent efforts at reconciliation proved unavailing, 
though Colonel Watterson, on the death of the first Mrs. 
Wilson addressed a beautiful letter to the President, in the 
White House. Mr. Wilson was anxious to give a high ap- 
pointment to his old friend, Colonel Harvey, but a violent at- 
tack upon him, at this very same moment, over the latter’s 


66 WOODROW WILSON 


pen, appeared in the public prints; and, of course, the mat- 
ter was dropped. 

Another incident which threatened a rupture was the fa- 
mous “Joline Letter.” This was a private communication 
addressed to a Princeton friend, in which Mr. Wilson who 
was not wholly in accord with the Bryan policies, expressed 
a wish that the peerless Nebraskan might be knocked into 
“a cocked hat.” It was not intended for the public eye, but 
in some way the contents of this letter leaked out, to the 
imminent peril of Democratic victory in 1912. Considering 
the part which Mr. Bryan was to play in the great Baltimore 
Convention, it is well that Mr. Wilson succeeded in smooth- 
ing over matters, so that no sting remained. But many in- 
sist that Mr. Bryan’s adroit move at Baltimore was made 
in his own behalf and not with any benevolent intentions to 
Mr. Wilson, who benefited by the coup. 





But not to anticipate. Abandoned by the conservative 
elements of the party, Woodrow Wilson’s cause was prompt- 
ly espoused by the Progressives, with all the more warmth. 
In him, they now recognized a Richmond. Following his 
reform victories in New Jersey he was stronger than ever. 

On the eve of the great convention of 1912 which met in 
Baltimore, Champ Clark, then Speaker of the national 
House of Representatives, appeared to be slightly in the 
lead. This was soon verified by a roll-call of the States. It 
seemed as if he were a sure winner. But his support was not 
cohesive, as subsequent developments were to prove. What 
followed is known to all. It is doubtful if, in the annals of 
American politics, such a convention ever assembled. Con- 
vening on June 25, it did not adjourn until July 2, and from 
beginning to end it was marked by an almost feudal bitter- 
ness. There was war to the knife between the conservative 
and the progressive elements—between the old and the new 
order of things. Judson Harmon, a former Governor of 
Ohio, and Oscar W. Underwood, of Alabama, then a United 
States Senator, were also among the popular candidates. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 67 


Wilson’s following steadily increased. His vote climbed 
slowly higher and higher. Then for a time it wavered. The 
convention was in the grip of a dead-lock; but the balloting 
proceeded until the delegates were worn to the point of ex- 
haustion, and were ready to leave for home, in sheer weari- 
ness of an unfruitful stay in Baltimore. The atmosphere 
of the great hall became drowsy and somnolent. All were 
seemingly listless. The crowds in the galleries were begin- 
ning to show impatience and to decrease visibly in numbers. 
It was at this crisis, in the hope of breaking the deadlock and 
of precipitating a stampede, that New York’s seventy-six 
votes were given to Clark. The man from Missouri was now 
seemingly certain of election. It is said that Mr. Wilson’s 
campaign manager, McCombs, now gave up the fight. His 
hope had been to capture the New York delegation. Mr. 
Wilson, who was then at Sea Grit, where he kept in close 
touch with the situation in Baltimore, also relinquished all 
hope, and retired for the night, little dreaming that a dit- 
ferent state of affairs would greet him on the morrow. 


Again, as in the great Chicago convention, of 1896, it was 
the eloquence of Mr. Bryan that turned the tide. Consistent- 
ly until now he had supported Mr. Clark. Introducing a 
resolution, the effect of which was to discredit, in the eyes 
of Progressives, any candidate who should receive the sup- 
port of “the privilege-hunting class,” he proceeded to deliver 
a speech which made the air electrical. It alienated the West 
from Mr. Clark’s support, by putting upon him the conserva- 
tive brand of the East, a most unfortunate stamp, consider- 
ing the temper of the convention and the sharply drawn 
lines of division between the factions. 

Pandemonium reigned. Once more Mr. Bryan was the 
proven master of assemblies. The vote on his resolution 
was indicative of the grand climax. Mr. Clark’s cause was 
doomed. Rapidly the strength of the New Jersey man wax- 
ed. Up went his vote, higher and higher, until the dead- 
line was crossed, and the end came. If it can be said that 
Providence presided over the deliberations of this great 


68 WOODROW WILSON 


body, William J. Bryan was undoubtedly his instrument. 
Says Mr. Tumulty: ‘“Bryan’s role as an exponent of out- 
raged public opinion and as a master of great conventions 
was superbly played. When he finally threw his tremendous 
influence to Wilson, the struggle was over. Indiana jumped 
to Wilson, then Illinois, and the fight was won.” 





Champ Clark never forgave Bryan. Nor with any lavish 
display of a warmth which he did not feel could he support 
Mr. Wilson, though a life-long Democrat was the Missouri 
statesman, a veteran old war-horse, who, without immodesty 
could point to many a scar of battle. It was a bitter disap- 
pointment; for, not only the nomination but the election 
seemed to be a prize almost within his grasp. It was to be 
the fitting climax to a long and useful career in public life; 
and from the Speakership of the national House of Repre- 
sentatives to the Presidency was a logical step. Mr. Clark 
suffered all the tortures of Tantalus, as the convention pass- 
ed into its final stages; and then, after maintaining a strong 
lead on so many ballots, beginning with the very first—to 
miss the elusive goal! The cruel thorn rankled in his bosom 
for the remainder of his days. It no doubt hastened the 
end, for his life was not long spared, nor was genial Champ 
Clark ever quite the same man after the Baltimore Conven- 
tion. Despite a brave front, his efforts to feign indifference 
only partially concealed a broken heart. But such are the 
tragedies of politics. Still sadder, in some respects, at least, 
was to be the fate of Wilson—the man who won. 

On came the November elections. Taft and Roosevelt 
divided the Republican vote and, as every one expected, the 
field was swept by Mr. Wilson. It was like a parting of the 
Jordan, whose waves on either side receded to permit this 
man of the hour—this Joshua of the hosts of Israel—to cross 
over, to the conquest of Jericho. In the electoral college, there 
was an overwhelming preponderance, and the figures stood 
as follows: Wilson, 485; Roosevelt, 88; Taft, 8; but an 
analysis of the popular vote shows that the combined Re- 


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THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 69 


publican strength was greater than the Democratic by over 
a million votes. Mr. Wilson was at his Princeton cottage 
when the news came, telling of the great victory, but think- 
ing of its responsibilities he was subdued rather than elated. 
The students of the University, however, proud of the honor 
which an old graduate and a former president had brought 
to the institution, were jubilant. Irrespective of party af- 
filiations, they paraded the streets with torches, and gave 
the successful nominee a visit, to receive from him a fitting 
acknowledgment. It was his first speech after the great 
election. Some of the residents of Princeton, including, per- 
haps, a few of the professors, did not congratulate Mr. Wil- 
son. The bitterness of an old fight was not forgotten ;—its 
thorns of memory still rankled. But his success, in this high 
hour, furnished a dramatic sequel to the now ancient quar- 
rel. Historic events were taking place. In the light of what 
was to follow, destiny was fighting for Woodrow Wilson. 
His star, resplendent and serene, was at last poised over the 
White House. The path of glory now led to Washington. 


70 WOODROW WILSON 


VII. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 


ARCH the Fourth found a vast concourse of people in 
IN Washington to witness the inauguration of a new 

president. Mr. Wilson was the second Democrat to 

occupy the White House since the Civil War, and 
with a change of parties at the helm of government there 
was a corresponding access of enthusiasm, due to partisan 
success, as the result of a most eventful campaign. The 
memory of that high day, with its bannered pageantry, still 
lingers. Mr. Wilson was at the height of his great physical 
and intellectual powers, in perfect health, and ready to take 
upon his shoulders whatever pertained to his office in the 
way of burdens. But little did he dream of the Atlantean 
test to which his strength was to be put. On an old Bible, 
which he reverently pressed to his lips, in solemn dedication 
of himself to the exalted trust, Mr. Wilson took the oath of 
office, while impressed by a spectacle so momentous the 
great multitude was silent. After the aged Chief Justice, 
Edward D. White, had finished his simple, but dramatic part 
in the ceremonies, Mr. Wilson delivered his brief inaugural, 
of which the concluding words were as follows: 

“This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. 
Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of hu- 
manity. Men’s hearts wait upon us, men’s lives hang in the 
balance, men’s hopes call upon us, to say what we will do. 
Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? 
I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking 
men, to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they 
will but counsel and sustain me.” 





Immediately President Wilson announced his Cabinet, the 
personnel of which had for months engrossed his thought. 
William J. Bryan, of Nebraska, was made Secretary of State. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 7\ 


The award of the premiership to Mr. Bryan was not only a 
requital of the part played by the peerless Nebraskan, in the 
convention at Baltimore, but a recognition of the towering 
prestige of Mr. Bryan as a Democrat, who had three times 
been the standard-bearer of Democracy, in great national 
campaigns, and whose following was strong throughout the 
country and in both houses of Congress. Mr. Bryan’s influ- 
ence was a most powerful and effective adjunct in crystal- 
lizing the Wilson policies into law. With many of these Mr. 
Bryan was in hearty accord; but, on account of a friendly 
difference of opinion, relative to international matters, Mr. 
Bryan, who was an avowed pacifist, retired from the cabinet, 
during an early stage of our controversy with Germany, and 
was succeeded by Robert Lansing, of New York, a trained 
diplomat, who was already an under-secretary in the State 
Department. 


William G. McAdoo, a native of Georgia, but then a resi- 
dent of New York and still later, of California, was given 
the Treasury portfolio. Mr. McAdoo was best known as the 
builder of the Hudson River tunnels. He was both a lawyer 
and an engineer. During the World War he developed su- 
perb powers as a financier; and besides rendering an un- 
paralleled service, in managing the nation’s finances, as 
Secretary of the Treasury, he also handled with masterful 
ability the difficult problem of transportation, as Director 
of Railways. He proved to be a many-sided man. Soon after 
entering the Cabinet, Mr. McAdoo became the President’s 
son-in-law. 


Josephus Daniels, of North Carolina, was made Secretary 
of the Navy, at this crisis of affairs, a most important post, 
which he held continuously for eight years, achieving, in the 
face of bitter partisan opposition, a splendid record, and de- 
veloping to a high degree of efficiency the nation’s fighting- 
power upon the water. Lindley M. Garrison, of New Jersey, 
a strong man, with bold initiative, was made Secretary of 
War, but on account of a disagreement between himself and 
Mr. Wilson, in certain matters of administrative policy, 


72 WOODROW WILSON 


touching the country’s preparation for war, he resigned; and 
Newton D. Baker, of Ohio, succeeded him at the helm of af- 
fairs, in this important bureau of the government. 


Mr. Wilson’s Attorney-General was the present distin- 
guished Federal Supreme Court Justice McReynolds, of Ten- 
nessee, who, preferring the toga, was succeeded by Thomas 
W. Gregory, of Texas, a successful lawyer. Franklin Knight 
Lane, of California, ably headed the Department of Interior; 
William C. Redfield, of New York, was made Secretary of 
Commerce; David F. Houston, of Missouri, Secretary of 
Agriculture; William B. Wilson, of Pennsylvania, Secretary 
of Labor; and Albert S. Burleson, of Texas, Postmaster- 
General. All of the last named holders of Cabinet port- 
folios served continuously throughout both administrations. 
Secretary Lansing’s resignation from the premiership was 
demanded, following differences of opinion, after the return 
from Europe, especially in matters relating to the Treaty of 
Versailles; to the Mexican policy and to the holding of un- 
authorized cabinet sessions while the President was an 
invalid. To fill Mr. Lansing’s post, Bainbridge Colby, 
of New York, was appointed. Thomas W. Gregory, of Texas, 
resigning his portfolio as Attorney-General, A. Mitchell 
Palmer, of Pennsylvania, became his successor. 


With a record for reform already achieved at Trenton, the 
country well knew that the new chief executive was not to 
let the issues of the hour repose in a mere declaration of 
words. Behind the high-sounding phrase of the manifesto 
there was a resolute spirit, a determination to enact into law 
every reform to which he was pledged by the platform of 
his party and by the assurances which he had himself given 
to the people upon the hustings. An itemized summary of 
the proposed reform program was made, and among other 
things were mentioned these: A revision of the tariff down- 
ward, a reserve system of regional banks, to prevent a con- 
gestion of the nation’s currency, and a much needed system 
of rural credits, for the relief of farmers. 

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THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM Ts 


giving Roosevelt and Taft together a preponderating 
strength, the Democrats won both houses of Congress, by 
safe majorities. On assuming office, therefore, Mr. Wilson 
had both wings of the legislative department under control, 
while a Democrat and an ex-Confederate soldier was Chief 
Justice of the United States. But the very magnitude of the 
victory was a menace; it was full of ominous import, and 
only tended to increase and to complicate the difficulties. 


Early in April, Mr. Wilson summoned Congress in extra 
session, in order that no time might be lost in giving the 
country needed relief. Immediately the world was given 
a startling exhibition of the Wilsonian leadership. Contrary 
to all precedents since the days of the elder Adams, he ap- 
peared before the joint houses of Congress, to deliver his 
message in person. It was an innovation. But Mr. Wilson 
was a maker of precedents. He was not afraid to take the 
initiative. He was a fighter in the open, eye to eye and face 
to face. As President, he desired to keep his hand on the 
pulse of the situation. Moreover, he believed in the vital 
power of personal contact. Obscurities of meaning were 
often thus removed. To him such a course was involved in 
the responsibilities of leadership, and he was to be a leader 
not in name only, but in fact. 


Committee organization was at once perfected with Demo- 
crats at the helm. Again he urged with more particularity 
of detail the reforms at which, in the brief inaugural, he 
could only hint. Immediately the wheels of legislation be- 
gan to grind. Nor did Congress adjourn for many long 
months—so vast was the work to be accomplished, so mani- 
fold the difficulties to be overcome and the problems to be 
solved. But it is not invidious to say that never, in any like 
period, were so many drastic and beneficient reforms placed 
upon the statute-books. Before his first administration 
closed, there was a reduced tariff. The free-list was greatly 
enlarged, and commerce was beginning to respond to the 
stimulating touch, with a busier day on the ocean. More 
than one economist has put himself on record as saying that, 


74 WOODROW WILSON 


for the first time in half a century the tariff was written 
in the interest of the masses and not at the dictation of the 
manufacturers. 


But Mr. Wilson’s master-stroke was achieved in the re- 
form of the national currency system. This was accomplish- 
ed by the Federal Reserve Act, the soundness of which there 
were many doubting Thomases to question. Though not the 
author of the measure, Mr. Wilson was one of the first to 
grasp its far-reaching possibilities of service to the nation. 
He was quick to perceive and bold to support its merits, and 
his clarity of statement proved most effective in removing 
its obscurities. Today the wisdom of this great reform meas- 
ure is recognized and conceded by all; but there were times 
when its defeat seemed absolutely certain. Mr. Wilson’s 
strong support alone insured its passage through both houses 
In preventing a congestion of the currency, its wisdom was 
justified in the first year of its operation. It kept the fi- 
nancial pulse of the country normal and averted a serious 
panic, when the smoldering fires of the European war burst 
into a flame which lit two hemispheres. 


Briefly outlined, it took out of private hands the control 
of the nation’s money and placed it in the Treasury Depart- 
ment; it could not be corraled by Wall Street bankers. Un- 
der the terms of this act, the country was divided into twelve 
districts or zones, and in certain designated cities were 
placed the reserves of these districts, so distributed with 
reference to the needs of business that every section might 
be equitably and promptly served. In view of the manifold 
benefits conferred by this one piece of legislation, it is diffi- 
cult to understand how any one with the true interests of the 
country at heart, could fail to see it; but many of our law- 
makers were spineless and irresolute, because of the opposi- 
tion which came from Wall street, whose power to control 
the money-market was thus narrowed by restrictions. The 
courage of Mr. Wilson was fully equal to the situation. Real- 
izing what such a measure meant to the country he vigor- 
ously sought its enactment; and he won the fight. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM fi, 


These reforms were all effected within the first twelve 
months. In 1914, the Clayton Anti-Trust law and the Fed- 
eral Income tax were put upon the statute books. While 
there was a Democratic majority in either house, it was not 
always united. There were many of the President’s own 
party who antagonized the Wilson policies, and with a strong 
Republican opposition, re-enforced by a divided sentiment in 
the Democratic ranks, the administration deserved al] the 
more credit for its record of accomplishments. 


Another achievement of the first administration was the 
repeal of the Panama tolls. It was a course to which the 
honor of America was pledged, but it was not without a 
bitter fight, involving an avalanche of abusive criticism and 
the alienation of many strong elements—including the Irish 
and the German—hitherto friendly, that the result was 
achieved. In plain violation of the Hay-Pauncefort Treaty, 
it was obnoxious to the moral sense not only of Mr. Wilson, 
but of the world, that any unfair advantage should be claim- 
ed and enjoyed by the shipping interests of this country, to 
the prejudice of others. 


It is stated by one intimately acquainted with the inside 
facts that while the repeal measure was pending, Mr. Wilson 
was deeply depressed and even considered seriously a resig- 
nation of his high office in the event he was not sustained 
by the action of Congress.* It will be remembered that, 
from his college days, he was strongly inclined toward the 
cabinet system of English politics. To vindicate the integ- 
rity and the wisdom of his course, he was ready to step down 
and out, if successfully opposed, until such a time as the 
people, in a spirit of protest against injustice and wrong, 
should return him to power; but despite a strong coterie of 
enemies in his own party, Congress, after a long debate, 
rallied to Mr. Wilson. 

To the southwest, there now loomed on the country’s hori- 
zon the dreaded Mexican problem, a complication of affairs 
inherited from the preceding regime of Mr. Taft. Critics of 


* Joseph P. Tumulty; also David Lawrence. 


76 WOODROW WILSON 


the administration were bitter in denouncing the President’s 
attitude of so-called “watchful waiting,” a phrase which 
was often quoted with a sneer of derision; but estimates of 
Mr. Wilson, of course, varied with the angle of vision. Back 
of this tirade of abuse were the private interests affected. 
Mr. Wilson’s policy was vigorously expressed in a firm re- 
fusal to permit either arm of the nation’s war power to be 
used in behalf of money-lenders and investors, trafficking in 
Mexican securities. It is well, in the light of subsequent 
happenings that we did not become involved in a vexatious 
war with Mexico. We needed all our resources as a nation 
to cope with a crisis which was fast approaching. It is 
only the bigotry of a narrow-minded partisanship which now 
denies to Mr. Wilson, at this juncture of affairs, the vision 
of a seer. With a prophet’s ken, he foresaw what was com- 
ing. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 77 


Vill. THE MEXICAN PROBLEM. 


ee 


SSENTIAL to any clear understanding of the Mexi- 
» = can problem, there are two factors which need to be 
(mG'|) thoughtfully considered: First, the inherent wrong- 
fulness of government by assassination, and second, 
the pernicious activity of German propaganda. A recogni- 
tion of both these factors underlay Mr. Wilson’s idealism in 
dealing with the situation. It was the hostility of investors 
which caused such an avalanche of criticism; but the Demo- 
cratic sympathies of Mr. Wilson were enlisted more upon the 
side of human liberty, in a real desire to help the oppressed 
Mexicans, who were anxious to establish a stable govern- 
ment, than upon the side of the money-lenders, whose only 
purpose in the exploitation of Mexico was sordid gain. Said 
he: 


“T have to pause to remind myself that I am President of 
the United States, and not of a small coterie of Americans 
with vested interests in Mexico.” 


Therein he touched the pivot on which all the criticism of 
his policy turned. But, in the opinion of Mr. Wilson, the 
great American army and navy were not maintained by the 
tax-payers to run errands for the syndicates or to do the bid- 
ding of money-lenders, whenever they should choose to give 
the word of signal. Moreover, he persistently refused to 
recognize Huerta because he saw in him only an assassin 
who, with bloody hands, had usurped the reins of power, 
incited by foreign investors. Wilson was too much of a 
devotee at the shrine of Thomas Jefferson to bestow a smil- 
ing countenance upon such a despot. 

To review a bit of history. Beginning with the close of 
the Spanish domination in 1824, when independence was 
achieved, Mexico had been a hot-bed of revolutions, an incu- 
bator of internal strife, making the century which has since 


78 WOODROW WILSON 


elapsed an almost constant reign of terror to the common 
people, in the minds of whom liberty had been associated, 
not with eternal vigilance but with unending bloodshed. 
There were fifty-two presidents or dictators, within the 
same number of years. Something like stability was at 
length realized, in 1876, when Porfiro Diaz, one of the lead- 
ers of the uprising against the ill-starred Maximillian, seized 
the government, and with an authority maintained by force 
of arms, established order and secured recognition. 


Though a dictator and a man of ruthless will, whose gov- 
ernment was upheld by bayonets, he belonged to the Pisistra- 
tus order of tyrants. He was a benevolent autocrat, a man 
of blood and iron, like Bismarck, and not without some quali- 
ties of statesmanship. For thirty-five years, he adminis- 
tered the affairs of Mexico; and the country enjoyed com- 
parative rest. But General Diaz made one fatal mistake. He 
granted too many concessions to foreign capital, parcelling 
out the rich lands of Mexico to wealthy syndicates, only to 
add to the entanglements of future complications. 


All of the internal works of Mexico, including railroads, 
mines and manufactories, paid tribute to foreign concession- 
aires. At the same time, education was neglected, poverty 
held the masses in a skeleton clutch, and outbreaks of re- 
sistance were suppressed with an iron hand. His object was 
not graft nor self-enrichment. He felt that he was develop- 
ing Mexico. But he was really playing into the hands of 
foreign capital; and he was oblivious if not indifferent, to 
the higher needs of Mexico, those which are not to be meas- 
ured in the scales of material values. 

At last, under the leadership of Francisco Madero, the 
head of an influential land-owning family, Diaz was over- 
thrown and in flight the old despot sought an asylum for 
his remaining days. Madero was thereupon elected presi- 
dent. But, during the closing hours of the Taft administra- 
tion, Mexico had become once more the scene of a madden- 
ing Saturnalia. Madero was murdered, and seizing the gov- 
ernment, Victoriano Huerta, the instigator of the crime, if 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 79 


not its actual perpetrator, declared himself president, and 
sent the following cablegram to Mr. Taft: 


“T have overthrown the government and, therefore, peace 
and order will reign.” 


Such was the status of affairs in Mexico when President 
Wilson took the oath of office, on March 4, 1913. Almost 
immediately he was called upon to act. Pressure from the 
interests was most exasperating. ‘European powers had 
already recognized the de facto government. But Mr. Wil- 
son refused to countenance the red-handed usurper. To 
him, government by assassination was unthinkable, in this 
twentieth century of the Christian era. His decision was, 
therefore, immutably fixed, and to all appeals he turned a 
deaf ear. 


Criticism became rancorous. Mr. Wilson was dubbed with 
all the epithets known to Webster’s unabridged—“supine- 
ness,’ “opportunism,” ‘‘vacillation,” ‘‘pusillanimity.” These 
terms were freely used to express the contempt which was 
felt in certain quarters for his policy of delay termed “watch- 
ful waiting’—a wise one in plain view of all the facts. Nor 
were the critics of Mr. Wilson appeased when he accepted 
a proposal of joint mediation, made by three South Ameri- 
can governments, Argentina, Brazil and Chile—styled the 
“A.B. C’s”. In the spring of 1914 a conference was held 
at Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side of the line; and, 
though it did not lead to definite action, it bore fruit in a 
better understanding with the powers of South America, 
an object for which Mr. Wilson was most solicitous. 

Again the cry of the critics was heard in the land. It 
rose like a choral strain from an army of locusts. Immune 
themselves—money bags at stake—they wanted war. Ger- 
many, across the sea, winked and smiled. 

Chaos continued to reign in Mexico. Two other guerillas, 
Carranza and Villa, made war upon Huerta, who eventually 
betook himself to flight. Thus a despot whose doom Mr. 


80 WOODROW WILSON 


Wilson foresaw was eventually overthrown, a result in which 
the President’s policy found its sufficient vindication. An 
incident of the revolution was the arrest by Huertists, in 
April, 1914, of a landing party of American sailors, an affair 
which threatened serious complications. The port of Vera 
Cruz was at once occupied by an American force and held 
until reparations were made, though not without some blood- 
shed. This was the nearest that Mr. Wilson came to de- 
claring war. 

On invitation of Mr. Wilson, an important conference was 
held in Washington, late in the summer of 1914, with repre- 
sentatives of Latin America. The result was that a joint 
Pan-American intervention was agreed upon, to take effect 
within ninety days, if stable conditions, in the meantime, 
were not restored. But Carranza’s star now began to rise. 
The outlook for established peace under this new leader was 
reassuring. Mr. Wilson was prepared to recognize Car- 
ranza. However, his hopes proved to be insecurely founded. 
News from the border soon told of a raid made by Villa, 
a chief of the bandits, upon American territory, and there 
arose at once the necessity for dispatching a punitive expe- 
dition, under General Pershing, to the harassed frontier. 


But Villa proved elusive. In the mountain ravines of 
Northern Mexico, he was beyond pursuit. Carranza was 
powerless. Moreover, he expected this country to round up 
the bandit, without any assistance from him, and was ex- 
ceedingly bitter in his strictures against the failure of the 
United States to reenforce his authority at home; and it 
looked like a fiasco for the administration. Why did it fail 
to declare war? Mexico was still unquieted, when at length 
the Lusitania was sunk and the nearer mutterings of dis- 
tant thunder from beyond the Atlantic drew the country’s 
attention to another point on the world’s horizon. It was 
an ugly situation for the speculators. But Mr. Wilson was 
guided by the wisdom of the hour—which was also the 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 81 


wisdom of the crisis; and, underlying the vexed condition 
of affairs in Mexico, he knew that German propaganda was 
at work, to keep America from entering the great conflict. 
So his seeming failure was after all his triumph. Said he, 
to his private secretary, in discussing the Mexican embrog- 
lio :* 

“It is not a difficult thing for a President to declare war, especially 
against a weak and defenceless nation like Mexico. In a republic like 
ours, the man on horseback is always an idol, and were I considering 
the matter from the standpoint of my own political fortunes and its 
influence upon the result of the next election, I should at once grasp 
this opportunity and invade Mexico, for it would mean the triumph of 
my administration. But this has never been in my thought for a single 
moment. The thing that daunts me and holds me back is the after- 
math of war, with all its tears and tragedies. I came from the South 
and I know what war is, for I have seen its wreckage and its ruin. It 
is easy for me as President to declare war. I do not have to fight, and 
neither do the gentlemen on the Hill, who now clamour for it. It is 
some poor farmer’s boy, or the son of some poor widow away off in 
some modest community, or perhaps the scion of a great family, who 
will have to do the fighting and the dying. I will not resort to war 
against Mexico until I have exhausted every means to keep out of this 
mess. I know they will call me a coward and a quitter, but that will 
not disturb me in the least. 

“Time, the great solvent, will, I am sure, vindicate this policy of 
humanity and forbearance. Men forget what is back of this struggle 
in Mexico. It is the age long struggle of a people to come into their 
own, and while we look upon the incidents in the foreground let us not 
forget the tragedy in the background, which towers above this whole 
sad picture. The gentlemen who criticise me speak as if America 
were afraid to fight Mexico. Poor Mexico, with its pitiful men, women, 
and children, fighting to gain a foothold in their own land! They 
speak of the valor of America. What is true valor? I would be just 
as much ashamed to be rash as I would to be a coward. Valor is self- 
respecting. Valor is circumspect. Valor strikes only when it is right 
to strike. Valor withholds itself from all small implications and en- 
tanglements and waits for the great opportunity when the sword will 
flash as if it carried the light of heaven upon its blade. 

“Some day the people of America will know why I hesitated to in- 
tervene in Mexico. I cannot tell them now, for we are at peace with 


* Woodrow Wilson As I Know Him, by Joseph P. Tumulty, pp. 158-9, Doubleday Page 
& Co., New York, 1921. 


82 WOODROW WILSON 


the great power whose poisonous propaganda is responsible for the 
present terrible condition of affairs in Mexico. German propagandists 
are there now, fomenting strife and trouble between our countries. 
Germany is anxious to have us at war with Mexico, so that our minds 
and energies will be taken off the great war across the sea. She wishes 
an interrupted opportunity to carry on her submarine warfare and 
believes that war with Mexico will keep our hands off her and thus 
give her liberty of action to do as she pleases on the high seas. It 
begins to look as if war with Germany is inevitable. If it should come 
—I pray God it may not—lI do not wish America’s energies and forces 
divided, for we will need every ounce of reserve we have to lick Ger- 
many. Tumulty, we must try patience a little while longer and await 
the development of the whole plot in Mexico.” 


Had Mr. Wilson’s policy of watchful waiting been ex- 
changed for the dire alternative, that of war, to appease the 
greed of speculators, whose private interests were endan- 
gered, it might have entailed direful consequences, with 
the European conflict coming on. Years might have been 
spent in a fruitless effort to capture bandits and in a 
wretched fight against guerillas. Millions might have been 
squandered to little purpose, and with an endless chain of 
petty vexations and depletions, in the end aggregating a 
king’s ransom. To bring about such a dissipation of Amer- 
ica’s strength was precisely the aim of the German war 
party and the whole inspiration of its nefarious propaganda. 
Emissaries of the German government were not only in 
Mexico, but in our own country, instigating the criticism 
which fell like a flood of fire upon the unbowed head of Mr. 
Wilson. 

During these years, the President is said to have been 
the loneliest man in Washington. His solitary figure was 
most pathetic. But the shadow of a great domestic be- 
reavement, while the Mexican problem was in its earliest 
phases, fell upon the President’s checkered path, making it 
darker still. On August 6, 1914, his beloved wife, Ellen 
Louise Wilson, died after a lingering illness. At her bed- 
side he had spent many an anxious hour, while the shafts 





ENTRANCE TO MYRTLE HILL 


On the heights of this beautiful cemetery at Rome, Ga., sleeps Mrs. 
Wilson, the President’s first wife, where her grave over- 
looks the meeting place of the waters 





THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 83 


of his critics fell thick and fast around him, and the taunts 
of his enemies rang in his ears. Mrs. Wilson was buried at 
her old home, in Georgia, on the hills of the Etowah, at 
Rome. It is said that the President’s grief for Mrs. Wilson 
became alarming to his physician, who saw in it the symp- 
toms of a settled melancholy. The imperative call to ac- 
tion, the necessity for throwing off his gloom and for mas- 
tering his sorrow, at a time of crisis, alone prevented a 
breakdown. Later, his second happy marriage restored to 
his nerves, long under heavy tension, a lost tone, and was 
undoubtedly instrumental in prolonging his days, and in 
making him equal to the weightier burdens which the Great 
War was soon to lay upon his shoulders. Fifteen months 
later, the President led to the marriage altar, Mrs. Edith 
Bolling Galt, of Washington, D. C., an accomplished lady 
of fine old Virginia family connections, who was now to be 
his loyal and tender helpmeet, amid the darkest hours and 
in the deepest waters through which mortal man is ever 
called to pass. Happiness came only to gild the night. 
Even now the shades of the olive trees were deepening in 
the Gethsemane glooms. 


84 WOODROW WILSON 


IX. THE WORLD WAR. 


ARLY in the summer of 1914, at Sarajevo, in Bos- 
E nia, one of the Balkan States, there was fired a 
shot which, like the one discharged by Emerson’s 


Minute Man, at Concord Bridge, was “heard around 
the world.” It proved to be the signal for an Armageddon, 
the far-reaching consequences of which no one could foresee. 
At once there began to wage the mightiest conflict of his- 
tory, and men everywhere marveled at the suddenness with 
which the storm had arisen. It seemed to have ripened 
almost in a day. But, ever since the Franco-Prussian War, 
with its temporary patch-work of adjustments and with its 
ever-increasing menace of militarism, the imminence of 
such a catastrophe was recognized. Thoughtful minds were 
prepared at any moment to see the pent-up fires burst forth 
anew. Over a live volcano, for something like fifty years, 
a vast continent, with its inter-related interests, had been 
dozing, like a giant asleep. Things were in such a delicate 
poise of balance that a touch was sufficient to destroy the 
whole equilibrium; and this was supplied when the shot in 
question was fired at Sarajevo, and Archduke Ferdinand 
fell to the ground, bringing down with him the peace of 
Europe, in one colossal mass of ruins. It was in one of the 
smallest of the Balkan States that the irritating cause of 
disturbance occurred; but like a match applied to a powder 
magazine, it started a conflagration which, spreading over 
Europe, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, threatened 
in time to leap the Atlantic and to involve the whole western 
hemisphere in its seething flames. 


German militarism was a menace to the peace of the 
world. England, with her eyes fixed upon the growing 
power of the Teutons across the channel, began to tremble 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 85 


for her foreign trade and to devise measures for bolstering 
her endangered supremacy upon the seas. Russia sought 
an outlet for her commerce upon the Mediterranean, where 
her Balkan dependencies were clustered. France was eager 
to recover her long-lost but still loved provinces of the 
Rhine; and Turkey, ever ready to balk her old enemy, Rus- 
sia, was in secret conference with the German Emperor, 
whose dream of a Mittel-europa, to embrace more than half 
the continent, she was ready to further. 


Mr. Wilson’s first year in the White House was hardly 
rounded before the Great War began. So rapidly did one 
event follow upon the heels of another that, within a week’s 
time five of the greatest powers of Europe had become in- 
volved,—Germany and Austria-Hungary, on one side, with 
England, France and Russia, on the other. Germany’s ruth- 
less invasion of Belgium, for the purpose of cutting a road 
to France, brought England at once into the conflict. Later, 
the Turks were to join the Teutons; while Italy, withdraw- 
ing from the Triple Alliance, was to cast her lot with the 
Triple Entente. It promised to be a prolonged struggle and 
to rock a planet with its titanic convulsions. 


Since the great civil conflict in America, tremendous 
strides had been made in the art of war. Engines of de- 
struction had been invented, with power to annihilate whole 
armies. Infernal gases had been discovered, with which to 
poison the atmosphere of wide areas. Navies had grown in 
size, efficiency and fighting-power. Submarines had mul- 
tiplied in number; while, to the list of death-dealing engines, 
had been added a new terror of the skies—the dreaded air- 
ship. 

If President Wilson was slow in committing America to 
this great world-conflict, it was because he knew what war 
meant. It was because he realized the importance of neu- 
trality, to the imperilled interests of the world. It was 
because he realized that only the imperative edict of neces- 
sity could be advanced in justification of such a step. It 
was because he realized that, before entering the war, there 


86 WOODROW WILSON 


existed the need of a preparation, thorough, complete, and 
all-comprehending; and if when the conflict was over, he 
dreamed of a world-peace, secured by a League of Nations, 
it was because he wished to see the reign of bloodshed in 
human affairs forever ended. 


The President’s firm stand for neutrality alone prevented 
this nation from becoming involved in the European War, at 
the very start, when such a thing would have been the folly 
of a madman. He refused to take counsel of passion. On 
August 18, 1914, he declared, in a proclamation to the 
country, that all must maintain a strict neutrality as between 
the warring powers. The Gulflight incident threatened a 
rupture between this country and Germany and had a man 
less evenly poised than Mr. Wilson occupied the President’s 
chair, serious consequences might have resulted. But Mr. 
Wilson’s wise diplomacy, without sacrificing the nation’s 
honor, succeeded in maintaining its peace, while at the same 
time due respect was exacted for the American flag. 


Of course, in a mixed population, in which there were 
elements akin to the warring nations abroad, it was dif- 
ficult to restrain individual sympathies. Blood is thicker 
than water, and human nature is always responsive to the 
claims of kinship. The clan, on a small scale, illustrates the 
force of this truth. Newspapers, in every section of the 
country, gave an unqualified support to the President, but 
as the war continued to extend its shadow over the world 
and its grim holocausts continued to grow the different ele- 
ments of a composite population inevitably began to take 
sides, according to racial affinities and ties of kinship. 
While a great majority of our people sprang from the British 
Isles, there was also a large French element; but more than 
ten per cent of the population was Teutonic. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that an assault upon the 
nation’s neutrality should have been made by German pro- 
pagandists, to which source, as time advanced, was traced 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 87 


the destruction of bridges and canals and the incitement to 
strikes in munition plants, from which the allies were de- 
riving supplies. President Wilson sought to allay all strife 
at home by appealing to national patriotism and by remind- 
ing the American people of the part which this country was 
to play, in healing the wounds of conflict and in adjusting 
the great issues between the combatants, in such a way as 
to promote the spread and to extend the sway of human 
freedom. 

At this time, he employed a phrase which his enemies 
have since greatly distorted. He said that, under such cir- 
cumstances, we should be “too proud to fight.” But there 
was nothing of subserviency or of eowardice implied in this 
“expression—no shrinking from an obvious duty and no sur- 
render to the promptings of an unmanly fear. Only the 
mandate of an imperative necessity could justify a partici- 
pation in the fight. Every one recognized the power of 
the American government. By holding ourselves aloof, we 
could best serve the cause of humanity; and when the war 
was over, in settling the points at issue, ours would be the 
supreme opportunity—it would be for us to act as a final 
referee and as a court of last resort. 

However, an event was now approaching which was fated 
to end neutrality and to hasten our entrance into the con- 
flict. On May 17, 1916, the Lusitania, an English vessel, 
the largest passenger ship on the ocean, was sunk by a Ger- 
man submarine, with the most tragic results. She carried 
1,800 passengers, of whom less than half escaped. On board 
the ship there were 180 Americans, most of whom found 
watery graves. This wanton act caused intense excitement. 
Thousands were ready for war. But even now Mr. Wilson 
did not see fit to precipitate such an event. The country 
was not prepared for war. What he did exact, however, 
was an instant apology, accompanied by such reparations 
as the tragic episode demanded. In the opinion of his critics, 
this was not enough. The murdered victims of the Lusi- 
tania called for a different sort of redress. But this was 


88 WOODROW WILSON 


coming in due season, when the nation should be ready for 
action. ; 

The quadrennial elections were coming on. But more im- 
portant than any personal triumph of his own at the polls 
President Wilson wished an expression of the popular voice 
before taking any drastic steps; the effect of which would 
be to commit the nation to a grim struggle, involving the 
sacrifice of countless lives. Critics did not spare him, but 
it was highly significant that neither the Republican nor 
the Progressive platforms urged war as a remedy for 
wrongs inflicted or as a step necessary for, vindicating the 
national honor. 

On a platform re-affirming his policies, Mr. Wilson was 
given a second nomination by the Democracy, amid enthu- 
siastic demonstrations, and with a unanimity of action, 
which bespoke a united following. The Republicans nomi- 
nated Mr. Justice Hughes, a former Governor of the State 
of New York but more recently an occupant of the Supreme 
Bench of the United States. He was a man of the highest 
integrity of character, and was supported by both wings 
of the old party organization. But the people rallied to 
Wilson, who won this time not only the electoral but also 
the popular vote, showing that he had made tremendous 
gains. His majority in the nation reached over a half 
million. Despite the malignant opposition of his enemies, 
he was stronger than ever with the great masses, because, 
in the language of the Democratic slogan, “he kept us out 
of war.” 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 89 


X. AMERICA ENTERS THE CONFLICT. 


= EFORE the time arrived for Mr. Wilson’s second 
NY] : ; UE Ng hehe aoe i 
‘ aS inauguration, the inevitability of our entrance into 
_= the great world conflict became apparent. Russia’s 
collapse had left the allies in a serious plight, and 
Germany was stronger than ever by reason of the ruthless 
savagery of her submarine activities. She was now the 
terror of the seas. To bring the devastating holocaust to 
an end, Mr. Wilson was preparing to make one more effort, 
when Germany, anticipating his own action in the matter, 
on December 12, 1916, besought a conference of the war- 
ring powers, ostensibly for the purpose of securing peace, 
but without disclosing the conditions. Mr. Wilson at once 
submitted the German proposal to the allied powers; but 
the reply was an emphatic refusal to accept her overtures. 
On January 19, 1917, Mr. Wilson delivered to the senate 
a great speech in which certain terms were suggested to 
Europe as a basis of peace. He was now beginning to move 
in a realm of idealism, new to the philosophy of the average 
man, if not of the average law-maker, and more unsparing 
than ever became the merciless barbs which the critics now 
shot in his direction. But in no public utterance made by 
Mr. Wilson up to this time were the powers of his great 
intellect more clearly disclosed. Immediately he began to 
loom as the world’s foremost figure, a prestige which he 
continued to maintain, with increasing recognition, despite 
an occasional shadow cast upon him by the drifting clouds. 
It was in this speech that he laid down some of the prin- 
ciples later enunciated in his famous Fourteen Points, and 
he also declared at this time that a “peace without victory” 
was the only basis on which a lasting peace could be secured. 
It was a noble effort to end the reign of bloodshed. But 
the temper of the times was too intense. The bloody toll 
was fated to continue until men and munitions were ex- 


90 WOODROW WILSON 


hausted. On January 31, it was evident that the war was 
entering a new phase. On that day, ominous in its fore- 
bodings, the German ambassador in Washington submitted 
to the Department of State a note in which the German gov- 
ernment announced its purpose to establish a submarine 
blockade in European waters, to include all the allied powers, 
England, France and Italy; and at the same time all nations 
were warned to take the necessary precautions, as ships 
were to be sunk at once in the forbidden zones, regardless of 
the flags which they floated. 





At last the moment for punitive action was at hand. Ger- 
many’s note was not only an affront to the patient forbear- 
ance of the President but it carried by implication at least 
a distinct threat to the United States, a wanton insult to the 
flag. It challenged our freedom of the seas. In a moment, 
it changed the whole situation, and fired the veins of the 
nation to a quicker pulse-beat. Instantly, Mr. Wilson was 
prepared to act. Without ceremony, he dismissed the Ger- 
man ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstoff. When Con- 
gress refused, however, to declare the country in a state 
of armed neutrality, due to an obstructive coterie in the 
Senate, he began at once to prepare the public mind for 
what was to follow. He did not wish to precipitate and to 
plunge the country into a deadly struggle until its full 
strength could be delivered in a most effective blow. He 
wished to have back of him a solid America, at a time, now 
almost fully arrived, when there should be a common vision 
of the ends sought and all should know for what we were 
fighting. 


Accordingly, he let the old Congress, which was in its 
last hours, die a natural death. But, on April 2, he called 
the new Congress in extra session, and then, in a speech of 
surpassing power, he declared that the course of the Ger- 
man government, in instituting a blockade, was, to all in- 
tents and purposes, an act of war against the government 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM G1) 


of the United States. With singular unanimity, Congress 
shared his point of view. On April 6—four days later— 
war was declared by pronounced majorities. But it was 
to be a war for principle, not a war for conquest. The tra- 
ditions of the nation were not to be ignored. Mr. Wilson 
was careful to make this plain. There were no imperialistic 
dreams to be realized, no selfish or sordid ends to be gained. 
The sole purpose for which we entered the war was to make 
the world safe for democracy and to maintain the sacred 
rights of mankind. 


Such was the burden of Mr. Wilson’s plea to the Ameri- 
can people, on this momentous occasion, when the repre- 
sentatives of the nation heard him with an absorbed at- 
tention in which not an accent was lost. Such was the si- 
lence which reigned throughout the chamber, during the 
pauses of this solemn deliverance, that the dropping of a 
pin could have been distinctly heard. It was a clarion call 
to patriotism. At the same time, there was to be an under- 
standing with Europe. She was not to misinterpret the 
motives which impelled us into the great conflict. She was 
to be served with notice that absolute equality, on the prin- 
ciples of our immortal declaration, was the only safe rule 
of international conduct, among all peoples, great or small, 
and that the rights of the humblest nation were to be 
respected. It was a speech intended by the President to 
fire the democracy of the world, and to prepare the minds 
of men everywhere for a new and thrilling chapter in the 
history of human progress. Back of this great speech there 
was not only the courage of a lion but the vision of a seer. 
It was a speech, the purpose of which and the effect of which 
was to mark an epoch in human thought. 


One of the achievements of the first administration to 
which we have not alluded was the passage of the Adamson 
bill, This extended the eight hour law to railway opera- 
tives and its wisdom was made apparent at once. At a 
crisis, in the affairs of the nation, it prevented an imminent 
strike and held the railway lines of the nation in readiness 


92 WOODROW WILSON 


for use, both in the transfer of troops and in the handling 
of supplies. Mr. Wilson gave ample evidence of the fact 
that, if a dreamer of dreams, an idealist and a man of vision, 
he was also a vigilant watchman on the tower, a bold, saga- 
cious, and fearless statesman, 

“Who knew the seasons, when to take 

Occasion by the hand, and make 

The bounds of Freedom wider yet.” 





This biography is not intended to compass the details of 
the Great War. We cannot even summarize the events 
which followed. It is no part of our purpose to enter this 
bewildering maze of perplexities. To other pens must be 
left the fuller story of how we prepared to enter the war, 
of how our boys were trained in camp and convoyed across 
the ocean in transports to re-inforce a waning cause, to 
pierce the Hindenburg line, and, on the battle-fields of Eu- 
rope, to exemplify the heroic genius and prowess of the 
American soldier. 


Mr. Wilson was criticised by many, including not a few 
Southern Democrats, for refusing to permit Colonel Roose- 
velt, with the towering prestige of his fame as a leader 
of troops in the field, to organize a volunteer legion for 
service on the European front. Remembering his laurels 
won in the great battle of San Juan Hill, during the Spanish 
American war, there were thousands of boys, in all sections, 
eager to enlist under his banner, and to lead such a legion 
Colonel Roosevelt was not only himself most solicitous, but 
had even made some progress in the work of organization. 


But it was the policy of the administration, under the best 
military advice, to employ only the organized force of the 
regular army; there were many who did not share the pop- 
ular notion as to Colonel Roosevelt’s fitness and who felt that 
a political boom might possibly underlie the tender of his 
sword; there was a feeling, too, in the army that such an 
appointment given to Colonel Roosevelt might prove de- 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 93 


moralizing to the regulars, besides defeating an important 
object which was deemed most essential to the success of 
the war, that of unifying all the forces under one command; 
and it was finally after consultation with General Pershing 
that the tender made by Colonel Roosevelt was declined. 
As the subsequent illness of the ex-President was to prove, 
he could not successfully have led the legion in person. He 
was not a well man, even at this time, and he died within 
two months after the Armistice was signed. Failure to 
utilize the services of General Leonard Wood, on the firing 
line, also exposed Mr. Wilson to some criticism; but an ex- 
planation is furnished in the opposition of General Persh- 
ing, who was in command of the American Expeditionary 
Forces, and whose recommendation was against such an 
appointment. 


Germany’s submarine atrocities—her ruthless murder of 
helpless women and children—her wanton sacrifice of hu- 
man life, in assassinating innocent neutrals and non-com- 
batants, constitutes the most revolting chapter in the an- 
nals of modern war. It justly brought upon her the right- 
eous indignation of the whole civilized world, and on the 
escutcheon of the fatherland it put a stigma which cen- 
turies cannot erase; but history, in rendering its mature ver- 
dict will lay the onus where it properly belongs—not upon 
the German people but upon the German war lords, upon 
an overweening militarism of which they were themselves, 
not the instigators but the victims. 

During the period which elapsed, from April 2, 1917 to 
November 11, 1918, when the armistice was signed, Mr. 
Wilson was the dominant personality of the whole crisis. 
He rose superior to any other man, whether in the field or 
in the forum and was the recognized leader whose word of 
command was heard at all times above the fierce mutter- 
ings of the storm. The gospel of democracy which he preach- 
ed was destined to thread its way into the very ranks of 
the enemy and to weaken the blows which, in the name of 
an imperious kaiser, were delivered with an ever decreasing 


94 WOODROW WILSON 


power, due as much to the leaven of the new ideal as to the 
powder exploded by the Allies. 

Every utterance of Mr. Wilson, during this eventful pe- 
riod, belongs to the history of his times. He spoke not only 
as the champion of an oppressed humanity but as the mouth- 
piece of a Higher Power. To quote the words of an English 
Liberal, in speaking of Mr. Wilson’s marvelous leadership, 
‘St was like the voice of God, talking over our heads, to the 
continent and to the world.’”’ There is no gainsaying the 
statement that Mr. Wilson’s messages and papers, in a sub- 
tle way, wielded an influence hitherto unknown in the iron 
chronicles of war. 

The President’s philosophy of peace was well epitomized 
on January 8, 1918, in an unrivaled speech, in which he for- 
mally laid down his famous Fourteen Points, now forever 
historic and immutably associated with his fame and genius 
as a world-statesman. These included: open covenants, 
self-determination, free-trade, access of inland nations to 
harbors, disarmament, freedom of the seas, and chief of all, 
a League of Nations, with regulative power to direct the 
affairs of the world, to enforce its decrees, and to insure a 
perpetual peace on the basis of universal brotherhood. 


So new to the public mind were some of these funda- 
mentals, especially the one relating to a League of Nations, 
that, while many of the leading diplomats and not a few 
metropolitan journals, were ready to endorse the program, 
it was evident that the average man needed time to think. 
It was a question, too, if Europe could be brought to such a 
mood of self-denial. Against the possibility of free trade, 
there arose a violent protest from the strongholds of pro- 
tection. The industrial centers became apprehensive. 

Seeing an opportunity for a masterstroke of political 
strategy, Colonel Roosevelt took the field, and, in his own 
vigorous way, went even so far as to deny that we were 
fighting to make the world safe for democracy, and in- 
duced many to share his point of view. Later, with a num- 
ber of prominent leaders, both Democrats and Republicans, 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 95 


he sought to press through Congress a bill, the effect of 
which was to create a war cabinet to advise the President 
and to keep him within the executive hedges. But Mr. 
Wilson did not care to become a puppet. He fought the 
proposed legislation and it was killed. 


Opposition, however, continued. The war policies of Mr. 
Wilson were made an issue in the Congressional elections 
which were now approaching and, in many localities, due to 
strong partisan hostility, the feeling was bitter, and the 
eurrents ran counter to Mr. Wilson. To resist the effect of 
such propaganda, re-enforced by the expenditure of vast 
sums of money, the President threw his customary restraint 
aside and sounded a partisan note from the White House. 
It may have been an unwise thing to do. Possibly so. To 
fight even the devil with fire is perhaps not strictly orthodox. 
At any rate, in an open letter, Mr. Wilson urged the country 
to return Democrats to Congress, in order that his execu- 
tive arm might be re-enforced by men of kindred sympathies 
and points of view. But the appeal was unavailing. It fell 
upon deaf ears, and with the crisis of the European War 
aproaching, Mr. Wilson was confronted for the first time 
with the prospect of a Republican Congress. The prospect 
was by no means reassuring. 





But, on November 11, 1918—a day forever luminous in 
the calendar of the world—in a little village of Northern 
France—the armistice was signed. Our boys had won the 
day for human liberty—had turned the red tide of war. 
But it would be ungenerous and unjust to ignore the part 
played by all in achieving a result so glorious. Without 
invidious distinctions, therefore, due credit must be given 
to the heroic sons of Italy, to the exhausted but valiant le- 
gions of France, to the shattered but ever-advancing col- 
umns of England and to her incomparable ships, for keep- 
ing the enemy at bay so long; and in the memory of Free- 
dom none of these things can ever be forgotten. 


96 WOODROW WILSON 


XI. AT THE PEACE TABLE. 





States, during his term of office, to journey beyond 

the national borders, and to put an ocean’s watery 

leagues between himself and the seat of govern- 
ment. There was a boldness in this step which carries with 
it all the flavor of knight-errantry and which can be paral- 
lelled by nothing in the career of Mr. Roosevelt, who gave to 
the presidential initiative a wealth of entirely new asso- 
ciations. It is also of amusing interest to note in this con- 
nection the attitude of Mr. Wilson’s critics. Only a few 
weeks before they criticized him because he was meek. 
Now these same resourceful individuals saw fit to criticize 
him because he was bold. The inconsistency was sufficiently 
diverting to rob an unseemly criticism of much of its sting; 
and it was well that Mr. Wilson was not in office for the 
mere purpose of pleasing his critics, who refused to be 
happy in any turn of events. 

But it was in keeping with Mr. Wilson’s sense of duty 
that he wished to be present at the Peace Table ;—it was 
a part of his responsibility which he could delegate to no 
one else, an article in his creed of faith, a binding factor in 
his obligation to the world and to the god of battles, who, 
at such a crisis, had called him to the helm of affairs. The 
summons of a higher court constrained him to cross the At- 
lantic. Moreover, the allied governments most earnestly de- 
sired him to head the delegation as America’s spokesman, 
and a definite request to this effect was made when the 
armistice was signed. 

Without looking for a precedent, he was ready to take 
the initiative, so powerful were the impelling reasons which 
commended this course of action. He was not afraid to 
become an innovator, when principles were at stake and 
when humanity called. The purpose was long in his mind 


04 T was a new departure for a President of the United 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 97 


to do this very thing, whenever the war should end. It 
sprang with all the inevitability of logic from: his con- 
ception of leadership, and it was all the more necessary in 
view of the famous Fourteen Points submitted by him as 
the basis for an enduring peace among the nations. Ac- 
cordingly, Mr. Wilson was fully resolved to attend in per- 
son the Peace Conference at Versailles. 


On December 2, 1918, Mr. Wilson, in his annual message 
to Congress, formally announced his intention to make the 
trip. Instantly an avalanche of criticism was unloosed upon 
the President’s head. Powerful newspapers joined the chorus 
of protest. Ex-President Roosevelt, whose death was only a 
few weeks off, demurred to the proposed journey—though 
nothing would have pleased him better, in good health, than 
to have taken the trip himself. Senator Lodge was up in 
arms. He was at this time chairman of the Committee on 
Foreign Relations. Both united in giving out a statement 
of conditions, under which the Republican party would act 
in the premises, the control having been restored to both 
houses of Congress at the recent elections; but the new Con- 
gress was not to meet until the year following. These con- 
ditions purported to be much more hostile to Germany than 
Wilson’s Fourteen Points; and it was protested with great 
warmth by the Republicans that they did not wish Mr. Wil- 
son to represent them at the Peace Conference and that 
in making this protest they were sustained by public senti- 
ment registered at the ballot-box. 

Every expedient known to political manipulation was em- 
ployed to keep Mr. Wilson at home. Indeed a former At- 
torney-General of the United States gave it as his legal 
opinion that Mr. Wilson would cease to be President the 
very moment his vessel steamed out of American waters; 
and that it would then be legally in order for the Vice- 
President to assume the duties of office as his successor. 
But Mr. Wilson flattered himself sufficiently to feel that 
he was as well acquainted with the constitutional ground- 
work upon which his office rested as was the astute lawyer 


98 WOODROW WILSON 


in question. Besides, Vice-President Marshall shared his 
chief’s point of view, and was fully in accord with his po- 
litical policies. There was never at any time a moment’s 
friction. 

All efforts to detain Mr. Wilson were unavailing. Every 
detail of the journey was arranged and it was planned to 
keep in touch, by cable, with all the branches of the gov- 
ernment, so that whether on ship-board or on European 
soil, he could still transact all important business demand- 
ing his attention. He did not see fit to appoint on the 
Peace Commission a member of the Federal Senate; and 
in this omission lay the seeds of future disagreement. What- 
ever may have been his reasons for not doing so, History 
will doubtless find that he was here in error. That body 
was a part of the treaty-making power of the government, 
and had he placed a Senator on the Commission, he might 
have disarmed criticism, to some extent. By giving the 
Senate representation, there would have been a point of 
vital contact, a connecting link, without which there would 
be a likelihood of friction, whenever it was called upon to 
approve a document, in the framing of which it had no par- 
ticipation. 

Some have criticised the President for not appointing Mr. 
Taft on the Commission. Though a Republican, he was an 
out and out champion of the League, and with the prestige 
of his name, as a former President of the United States, 
there would have been provided a cruze of oil with which 
to calm the troubled waters, due largely to partisan oppo- 
sition. Moreover, it was urged that the apointment of Mr. 
Taft would have given to the Commission a wholly non- 
partisan and a broadly patriotic aspect. To all these criti- 
cisms, it may be said that Mr. Wilson weighed carefully in 
his mind the matter of the Commission’s personnel and 
was guided by what seemed to be the wisdom of the mo- 
ment. | 

It is well known that Mr. Wilson thought seriously of 
appointing the distinguished Elihu Root, who had under- 





—Copyright: Harris and Ewing. 


PRESIDENT WILSON IN 1917 


This picture was taken after the delivery of an address to the D. A.R., 
in Washington, D. C., and Mr. Wilson is here seen as he 


was leaving Continental Hall, accompanied by his 
wife, Mrs. Edith Bolling Galt Wilson 





THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 99 


taken, in the early days of the European War, an important 
errand to Russia; but on account of his age there was an 
abandonment of this idea. Conscious of his responsibility, 
he wished also no doubt, to keep the leadership, so far as 
he could consistently do so, within his own party and in 
his own hands. The Commission, as finally constituted, was 
as follows: Hon. Robert Lansing, Secretary of State; Colo- 
nel E. M. House, a close friend who was in the confidence 
of the President, and his personal representative on many 
important errands to Europe, involving secrecy and dis- 
patch; Hon. Henry White, a Republican, unembittered by 
partisanship, and an experienced diplomat; and General 
Tasker H. Bliss, an eminent authority, to advise in military 
matters, and who was without any former political affilia- 
tions. Altogether, it was a strong body of safe, competent 
advisers. 





With Mrs. Wilson, the President took passage on the 
“George Washington”, leaving New York, December 5, and 
arriving in Paris, December 15, eleven days thereafter. The 
metropolis of France went wild with enthusiasm. Celtic 
veins are coursed by warm blood; and not since the days 
of Napoleon the First was there anything to surpass the 
ovation given to Mr. Wilson. He seemed to embody the sal- 
vation wrought by America’s participation in the Great War. 
Just before the Christmas holidays, he visited London, to 
be received with royal honors by the King and Queen, and 
to be acclaimed by the masses. Making all due allowance 
for the English temperament, it equalled the reception given 
him by the French. Next, he visited Italy, early in the 
month of January, and here he was greeted with a perfect 
riot of enthusiasm and hailed as a new Messiah come to lift 
a foreign yoke, to establish a glorious kingdom, and to in- 
augurate an era of peace on earth. There was no purpose 
to vaunt himself on these visits, which were made during 
the delays incident to the assembling of the Conference, 
and at the request of the governments concerned. 


100 WOODROW WILSON 


Mr. Wilson was not unaware of the risk which he incurred; 
but there was no lack of vigilance to insure the safety of his 
person. He also knew that enthusiasm could not be held 
continuously at these high altitudes; that all would not be 
satisfied with the work of the Conference; that before its 
deliberations were concluded selfish interests would become 
dominant; that much of his popularity would then be sac- 
rificed; that greed of conquest, inflamed by the passions of 
conflict, was not a thing easily appeased; that concessions 
would come dear, converting plaudits into execrations, pro- 
ducing a great change in sentiment towards him in Europe 
and making his enemies in America more vindictively and 
savagely hostile;—but, in spite of all these contingencies, 
he was there to fight for the great cause of peace, and he 
was there to represent an oppressed humanity, whose rights 
were to be protected. 





EKurope’s commitment, by centuries of intrigue, to the 
dark labyrinths of a secret diplomacy, made it evident from 
the start that open covenants were out of the question. Not 
one of the European countries was willing to air its skele- 
tons in public or to discuss in open court grave issues of 
international policy, involving the domestic sanctities. These 
could be whispered only in the cloisters, lest the great ends 
for which they were fighting should be jeopardized. So the 
first of the Fourteen Points went to the discard, and it 
was behind closed doors that the deliberations of the Peace 
Conference proceeded. 

Within a very short while it developed that the assem- 
blage was too unwieldly for the dispatch of important busi- 
ness; so a smaller council was organized consisting of the 
major powers, represented as follows: President Wilson, 
representing the United States; Lloyd George to speak for 
England, Clemenceau for France, Orlando for Italy, and 
Makino for Japan. But later the inner council was reduced 
to four, the Japanese Commissioner absenting himself from 
the deliberations of the body, because of disagreements, 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 101 


which he was unwilling to adjust. There was also grave 
discussion of the voting-power which belonged to each, but 
into this we need not enter. The prestige of the United 
States was fully recognized and maintained. 


Wilson was the dominant figure. He did not wholly de- 
tach himself from his colleagues of the American Commis- 
sion, but he recognized his responsibilities touching the Four- 
teen Points, and with the strength of a giant he threw him- 
self into the fight. The crux of the whole contention was a 
League of Nations. It was the essential feature of the 
statesman’s great dream of a world peace, liberating the 
energies of men for the promotion of the fine arts, for the 
cultivation of the gentle humanities, and for the cause of 
human progress. The other representatives labored for a 
month to arrange the preliminaries of a peace without the 
Wilson principles, but failing to agree the whole Conference 
met on February 4, and accepted the League idea as an 
integral part of the Treaty, putting it foremost in the docu- 
ment. 

Wilson’s idealism prevailed. The President had won the 
fight, after yielding many disputed points and after devot- 
ing many strenuous days and sleepless nights to the bat- 
tle, in which his strength was greatly exhausted. He often 
wore a haggard look, but revived by his victory he returned 
at once in all the elation of triumph to America, to be ac- 
corded a tremendous ovation. The public addresses which 
he delivered were designed to create a sentiment in support 
of his work at the Peace Table; and he sounded a solemn 
note of warning to his critics, that so interwoven were the 
Treaty and the Peace Covenant that any rejection of the 
one involved a rejection of the other, and that, if the fight 
against his policies continued the fruits of the great victory 
would be lost, in an unseemly scramble to further partisan 
ends. 





Having made this visit to America, Mr. Wilson returned 
to Paris, only to find that in his absence the Conference had 


102 WOODROW WILSON 


receded from its former action and that, abandoning the 
League idea, it had substituted a peace of indemnities, an- 
nexations, and reprisals.* It was a bitter disappointment. 
But Mr. Wilson would not become a party to such an agree- 
ment; and for a month, almost single-handed, he fought 
for a peace, based upon pure democracy and grounded upon 
essential righteousness. He espoused the cause of the weak- 
er governments; and there he stood—the champion of the 
common people of the world, the spokesman for the great 
masses of mankind. Beside him, at this critical time, stood 
his physician, watching every movement, using every pre- 
caution, to safeguard the life of the man, who was thus per- 
forming the great task of Hercules. At one time, during 
the Paris fight, Mr. Wilson was seized with an attack which, 
in his weakened condition, might have carried him off but 
for the timely aid of science, employed at the right mo- 
ment, by this wise owl of a doctor. 


Again Wilson was victorious. At heavy cost, not only to 
his strength but to his cause, he had won an unequal fight. 
Its marks he would ever carry upon his person. The docu- 
ment was not what he would have made it, for there were 
other points at issue, which he was obliged to yield; but it 
contained most of the essentials, including the League. This 
he had saved. 


It was perhaps the supreme day of Mr. Wilson’s life when, 
some two weeks later, with a glow of elation on his calm 
face, he stood in the American Senate to give an account 
of his stewardship and to deliver the great document to the 
assembled body of law-makers. Said he, in words which 
have since become epochal: ‘Dare we reject it and break 
the heart of the world?” It was one of the dramatic mo- 
ments of history, which the inspired artist may some day 
put upon canvas, to hang in the nation’s capitol. 


* Col. E. M. House was held to blame for this condition of affairs, and accordingly 
there ensued a rupture in the hitherto friendly relations which he sustained to 
President Wilson. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 103 


But the hour’s calm was ominous. The suppressed fires 
were ready to burst into flame. Hostile glances met his 
own, and from every quarter there was to come an oppo- 
sition, bitter and relentless. The Senate’s artillery was 
ready for action. He looked into the muzzles of loaded guns, 
on both sides of the Chamber. Even men of his own party 
were found to be in the enemy’s camp. On the other hand, 
with a strong minority of Democrats, there were a few 
Republicans who stood with Wilson, and, in the country at 
large, unbound by the trammels of party and looming like 
the peaks of Teneriffe, stood Elihu Root and William H. 
Taft. 

To stem the tide of opposition—to save the peace of the 
world for which he had so grimly battled at the ancient 
court of the Bourbons, Mr. Wilson, though worn to a shadow, 
resolved to go at once before the country, in a whirlwind 
campaign. It was over the protest of Admiral Grayson, his 
physician, that he reached this decision; but there was no 
alternative, in moral responsibility, in self-respect, or in 
honor. He felt that, having entered the war, it was an ex- 
hibition of Punic faith, that it put a stain on the flag, to 
ignore the obligations and to decline the opportunities which 
grew out of our participation in the conflict—that it was a 
disappointment to well conceived and well grounded expec- 
tations—that it was not keeping faith with our dead—that 
it did not accord with our mission to the world and our high 
place among the nations, to desert in peace the men who 
had been our allies in war, our comrades in fighting human- 
ity’s battles. Moreover, he felt that victory was only half 
won; that all might be lost and lost eternally, if not crystal- 
lized in the Magna Charta of an enduring Covenant. 





It was the beginning of the end. Not for the League of 
Nations but for its great architect—not for the splendid 
dream itself, but for the dreamer, the hour of departure was 
now fast approaching. Wherever Mr. Wilson appeared, he 
was given an ovation, and it seemed that the tide was be- 


104 WOODROW WILSON 


ginning to turn. All the way to the Pacific coast he blazed 
a luminous trail—beating down opposition—winning men 
to his side—waxing more and more eloquent as the powers 
of his great mind expanded under the inspiration of his 
matchless ideal. But suddenly, at Wichita, Kansas, came 
the grim stroke. It was necessary to cancel at once all en- 
gagements; and, with the speed of lightning, Mr. Wilson’s 
special was turned in the direction of Washington. 

Medical experts were summoned. There began in the 
White House another fierce battle—this time with an an- 
cient enemy of the race. His adversary was Death; and, 
for a time, the grim old fighter won. So closely was he 
barricaded that rumors of every kind were set afloat—all 
of them mere figments of the imagination. It was even whis- 
pered that his great mind was in eclipse, that its powers were 
hopelessly shattered, that he was incapacitated for the fur- 
ther duties of his high office, and that steps should be taken 
to declare the Presidency vacant. Never was the mind of 
Mr. Wilson clearer than during those days of bodily dis- 
tress. He kept an eagle’s eye upon the situation in Wash- 
ington. Nothing escaped him; and such slanderous reports 
as found credence at this time only show to what extremes 
malignity will sometimes go and to what baseness it will 
stoop. 


But even as he lingered upon the mysterious border land 
of Eternity—when his life was trembling in the balance— 
the implacability of his foes in the Senate, uncurbed by any 
bridle of restraint, in this anxious hour, asserted itself with 
an even greater vindictiveness. Henry Cabot Lodge, whose 
name in the memory of future generations will be redeemed 
from utter oblivion, only by reason of its association with 
Mr. Wilson’s, was the arch-enemy of the great President, 
and his malignant hatred betrayed itself in every accent of 
his voice and in every gleam of his eye, as he stood in the 
Senate, day after day, to fight the League of Nations. His 
speeches chimed with the echoes of the hour but not with 
the deep and solemn chant of the ages. 





BETHLEHEM CHAPEL 


Showing the exact spot in which the twenty-eighth 
President lies buried 





THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 105 


Another bitter enemy, was Senator A. B. Fall, of New 
Mexico, who later became Secretary of the Interior in Mr. 
Harding’s cabinet. But in less than two years he retired 
from that office a disgraced man—whose very name became 


a by-word, due to the exposures of the Teapot Dome Scan- 
dal. On the Democratic side of the chamber, James A. Reed 


was afterwards repudiated by his own home state of Mis- 
souri, which refused to endorse him in his presidential as- 
pirations, and so one after another the enemies of Mr. 
Wilson fell upon evil times. But we digress. 


Some were opposed to the League in toto. Others were 
for accepting it with certain reservations. There were a 
few who were ready to accept it without reservations. In 
fact, every divergent shade of opinion was represented in 
the bewildered counsels of the upper house of Congress. 
But Mr. Wilson was opposed to any modifications. He con- 
sidered it a breach of faith to mutilate the document. He 
wanted it intact or not at all. Here he may have made a 
grave mistake; for with a few concessions, he might have 
secured a ratification of the instrument. Two grim battles 
were now in progress. One in the White House—the »ther 
on the Hill. To forecast the result in a word, the Treaty 
was rejected; and, in the national elections of 1920, the Re- 
publican party was overwhelmingly triumphant at the polls. 
Warren G. Harding defeated Governor Cox, the champion 
of the Wilson policies, who was given the Democratic nomi- 
nation at San Francisco, on a platform approving the League 
Covenant. 

It was due to reaction—to the restlessness incident to a 
period of reconstruction, when everything was out of joint 
and in need of adjustment, that the flag of democracy went 
down in such a tragedy of defeat. Seemingly Mr. Wilson’s 
life was prolonged only that he might look upon the doom of 
his hopes. But his belief in the ultimate triumph of his 
cause never wavered. There was a note of sublime optimism 
in his words addressed to Mr. Tumulty, his faithful private 
secretary, who sought to soften the blow. Said he: “Tu- 


106 WOODROW WILSON 


multy, I had rather go down in defeat with a cause which 
will one day be victorious than to win with a cause which 
will one day be defeated.” 





One of the happiest moments of Mr. Wilson’s eventide 
of life came at this time to gladden the aching heart of the 
invalid. It was the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him in 
1920, in recognition of his great work at the Peace Table; 
and it served once more to call attention to the fact that 
the patient sufferer in the White House was the foremost 
of those whom the close of the Great War found working 
for the peace of the world on a lasting basis of human 
brotherhood. He was by preéminence the great Peace- 
maker; and he had given the best days of his life and the 
most strenuous powers of his intellect to an Ideal, the benign 
purpose of which was to promote the fraternity of nations. 
Said he, in accepting the prize: “The cause of peace and 
the cause of truth are of one family. Whatever has been 
accomplished in the past is petty compared with the glory 
of the promise of the future.” 


During the fever-haunted months, when the restless in- 
valid was a prisoner in the White House, Mrs. Wilson kept 
a strict watch at the bedside of her husband. To the tender 
nursing of a Florence Nightingale, she added the sleepless 
vigils of a Roman sentinel. She became the mediator of all 
approach to the person of Mr. Wilson, it mattered not who 
the visitor might be or how important the document which 
called for his official signature; and thus she was not only 
the guardian angel of the great man who lay in the White 
House, but, in no mere fanciful or far-fetched sense, was the 
arbiter of the destinies of America. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 107 


XII. LAST DAYS OF MR. WILSON. 





N March 4, 1921, Mr. Wilson left the White House. 
és Feeble from his long illness, care-worn and broken, 
|| he nevertheless insisted on observing the ameni- 
ties. He desired to show every courtesy to his 
successor, President Harding, and accordingly rode with 
him to the capitol, for the inaugural ceremonies. To the 
retiring chief executive, it recalled another day, eight years 
before, when in vigorous health, with elastic step and with 
buoyant hope, he had made the journey from Princeton to 
assume his crushing weight of responsibilities. What havoc 
the years had played! He now leaned heavily upon his cane 
There was an obvious droop of the shoulders. On his face 
there was a deep pallor, which told its silent story of suf- 
fering. Time had also there ploughed its deep furrows. 


It was Harding’s day; but many were the moistened eyes 
which were riveted upon the attenuated figure of the out- 
going President. They, too, remembered that other day, 
and thought of the intervening years. President Harding 
was veritably a prince in the delicate attentions which he 
bestowed upon Mr. Wilson, assisting him both to enter and 
to leave his carriage, and entreating him to lean upon his 
own strong arm. There was a kinship of spirit between 
these men—a kinship of vision—a kinship of tragedy. 


Cruel oftimes are Fate’s bitter ironies. Back of the gay 
scenes which ushered Mr. Harding into the highest office 
which his countrymen could bestow upon him—back of 
the day’s feverish excitement and garish splendor—there 
lurked the great enemy, whose eyes are ever upon the cita- 
del of human life, and from whose icy touch not even the 
great are exempted. Within less than two years, Mr. Hard- 
ing’s career in the White House came to an abrupt end. It 
was like a bolt from the blue. He, too, was crusading for 
liberty, when stricken down in San Francisco, and there 


108 WOODROW WILSON 


was flashed to the world, aghast with astonishment, the 
story of his passing. He, too, was a dreamer—who dreamed 
of a world court—of a brotherhood of man. It was well, too, 
that he was taken at this time, for there were breakers 
ahead, involving three members of his cabinet, in one of 
the most sensational disclosures of the day: that relating to 
a wholesale pirating of the nation’s reserve oil lands. 


But Mr. Wilson lingered on. In retirement, he continued 
to live in Washington, having purchased a home on “S” 
Street. Here, for three more years, he still watched the 
battle—observed the tenderness with which men every- 
where turned toward him—witnessed the breaking up of 
clouds and the ever widening spaces of the blue, in the sky 
above him—until life began to take on a new beauty and a 
new sweetness. It was thought by many that he was grow- 
ing stronger, that he was on the road to recovery, and that 
Richard would soon be himself again. 

It was when the Unknown Soldier was buried at Arling- 
ton that Mr. Wilson was seen for the first time, after many 
months, on the streets of Washington. He rode in an old 
coach, which belonged to an earlier day, but the ovation 
which he received made the very air electrical. Again, he 
was seen in the line of cars, at Mr. Harding’s funeral. Often, 
when the weather permitted, he enjoyed an outing with 
Mrs. Wilson, driving into the country, along the shores of 
the Potomac and back among the hills of Maryland. Some- 
times, these trips carried them into Virginia, his native 
state, whose air was always sweet in his nostrils. Now and 
then he was seen at the theatre, where the crowds always 
rose when he entered and broke into plaudits. Just a few 
weeks before his death, admiring friends gave him a hand- 
some automobile, in which he took a keen delight. 

Admiral Grayson was constant in his attendance upon 
the illustrious patient, and it was due to his professional 
skill, re-enforced by the loving watchfulness of Mrs. Wilson, 
that he was so long spared. The end came on the morning 
of February 3, 1924, and was immediately hastened by a 





ST. ALBAN’S LOFTY CATHEDRAL 


Overlooking the City of Washington. Only a wing of the great 
American Westminster was completed in 1924 





THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 109 


wasting of the arteries, accompanied by a derangement of 
the digestive system. Like the Pilgrim, in the tale of 
Bunyan, he had stood upon the cloud rests of the Delectable 
Mountains—had caught the rapt vision and seen the Celes- 
tial City ;—but now he had crossed the river, and there was 
shouting on the other side. Though an elder in the Pres- 
byterian Church, he was buried with Episcopal honors in the 
great unfinished cathedral on Mount Saint Alban; and de- 
spite the fact that a private funeral was planned the digni- 
taries of the nation and of the world reverently followed 
him to the crypt, in which the great Peace President was 
gently laid to rest. 

It was fitting that a body of World War veterans should 
have borne the pall and paid in this way an unworded but 
eloquent tribute of love to the old commander-in-chief. Right 
Reverend James E. Freeman, Bishop of Washington, offi- 
ciated, while the president’s two former pastors, Rev. 
James H. Taylor, D.D., pastor of the Centra] Presbyterian 
Church, of Washington, and Rev. Sylvester W. Beach, D.D., 
pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, of Princeton, as- 
sisted in performing the last sad rites. When the ashes of 
the great man were lowered into the crypt, amid the soft- 
ened twilight shadows of the beautiful Bethlehem Chapel, 
with its pure white marbles, many thought of the great 
laureate’s chant to the Iron Duke, and there recurred the 
lines of Tennyson: 


‘In the great cathedral leave him— 
God accept him, Christ receive him.” 





Serene as a sunset in a Southern Autumn was the passing 
of this great man. Everything was there to make his go- 
ing out majestic—not only the ministrations of a loving 
wife, the constant companion of his long and lonely vigils— 
not only the attendance of a host of friends whose faces 
never wore an altered look—but the homage of an admiring 
world was brought to his bedside, borne upon every wind 


110 WOODROW WILSON 


of heaven, articulated in every accent of earth’s myriad 
tongues. It seemed as if all nature was touched to tender- 
ness and to tears. In front of the darkened shutters of his 
home, thousands knelt on the street, in a posture of prayer, 
mid the falling snow, and such a spectacle the youngest who 
beheld it will doubtless never witness again. Even his 
enemies were stricken dumb in that solemn hour which 
marked the passing of a great soul from time to eternity— 
from all the countless ills of a vexed and troubled existence 
to— 


“Where beyond these voices there is peace.” 


Clouds which, at mid-day, make a chariot for the storm 
king, out of which he hurls his thunder-bolts and shakes his 
lurid lightnings, become at sunset a couch of splendor for 
the dying day; and, leaning upon his bed of beauty, the 
great luminiary throws back a lingering smile upon the 
world, all the more radiant because of the very gloom 
through which he has fought his way to glory ;—and then 
overhead, in the deepening twilight, swarm the stars, and 
gently come forth the zephyrs, fragrant with balm, to play 
among the folded flowers. 

Thus lingered Wilson. Though a helpless invalid for 
three more years, after quitting the stately mansion of 
power, he was still the central figure of all Washington. 
There in retirement, he still held court—received the dele- 
gates and the diplomats who came to do him honor; and 
there enshrined in the nation’s very heart, in the cathedral 
on Mount Saint Alban, his last resting-place will become 
a Mecca for all the earth. 

Galahad and Launcelot, fused into one, he was both, a va- 
liant and a pure knight, but he could fight no more for 
King Arthur. Like the stainless hero of the ancient legend, 
his fame would forever be associated with a Table—not 
a Table of Blood but a Table of Peace—would forever be as- 
sociated with a gleam from Heaven, with a quest for a 
Golden Grail. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 111 


Only a few days before the end came, he had thrilled a 
world with what proved to be his last public utterance— 
his valedictory to the nations. There was a vigor about it 
which suggested a return to health. It seemed to say: “I 
am back again in armor.” It was full of the same old fire 
of battle. There rang through it all the same old note of 
invincibility which it carried in the lusty days. But the 
old gladiator would return no more to the arena—the old 
athlete would be seen no more in the Olympic games. The 
pulse-beats were growing faint and sluggish—the sands of 
life were fast escaping from the hour-glass—the candles 
were burning low in the socket, and soon the last flicker- 
ing of the flame would go out in darkness. 

“Tam ready!” Those words, addressed to Admiral Gray- 
son, were among the very last to fall from his lips—a golden 
text to which his whole life was a Sermon on the Mount. 
Even in the darkest hours of the great conflict, when a 
planet rocked beneath him and all the world trembled, his 
faith wandered in green pastures and reposed beside 
still waters. So now, when the end came, he could say: 
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of 
death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and 
thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before 
me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my 
head with oil. My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and 
mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall 
dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’’* 

Perhaps, in his dying moments, he caught another vision, 
like the one which the great law-giver caught above the 
clouds of Pisgah—the vision of his dream fulfilled, in the 
distant prospect of a Promised Land. He saw, in the white 
light of the future, what the Prince of Israel’s prophets saw 
in the ecstacy of inspiration, a time when swords should be 
beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, when 
wars and rumors of wars should cease, when nation should 
not lift up sword against nation, nor learn war any more, 
* XXIII Psalm. _ 


1 WOODROW WILSON 


when the lion and the lamb should lie down together, and a 
little child should lead them. He saw what John saw, on the 
Isle of Patmos, a new Jerusalem let down from Heaven. He 
saw what Tennyson saw, in the dream of Locksley Hall, “a 
federation of the world” and “‘a parliament of man,” in which 
the war drums should throb no longer and the battle flags 
should all be furled. He saw a millenium, overarched by 
love and grounded upon law; and seeing these things, he 
could say with Simeon, ‘‘Now lettest thou thy servant de- 
part in peace, for he has witnessed the consolation of Israel.” 





Exquisitely timed was the hour of his going. On God’s 
holy day, he breathed his last and yielded up his great 
spirit. While the Sabbath bells, upon a frosty air, were 
ringing an invitation to God’s house, he heard, beyond the 
fields and above the hill-tops, the distant chimes of a diviner 
summons, and it made sweet music in his dying ear. The 
tired dreamer fell into the dreamless sleep which knows no 
waking this side the stars. ‘“Life’s fitful fever o’er,” like 
Duncan the king, “he slept well’. The beauty of death had 
softened all the wrinkles; and there he lay in kingly silence, 
this king of men, who called himself a servant. He had 
finished his course. He had fought a good fight. He had 
kept the faith. Henceforth the martyr’s everlasting crown 
and the Great Peace of Eternity! 


Well might they have wrapped him in an old Blue Ban- 
ner—to mingle with the stars and stripes—for like his 
kindred of the highland clans he had fought for a Covenant! 


In the bitterest crisis of human history, he had met the 
crucial test, had been true to the highest ideals and to the 
best traditions of his race, and he stood amongst the fore- 
most of all the Anglo-Saxons. In the greatest drama of the 
centuries, he had played the stellar role, and now the curtain 
had fallen on the play, and the lights were all extinguished. 
Amid the jeering taunts of a merciless criticism, he had 
kept the even tenor of his way, unafraid, because conscious 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 113 


of the rectitude of his own heart. Through the burning hell 
of a fiery ordeal he had come unharmed, aye, purified by 
the flames. 


His gallant breast bore many a scar, to tell of the battles 
he had fought for Christendom. There was many an inden- 
tation on his knightly shield. But the old warrior was now 
at rest. His lance was laid aside. His sword was sheathed. 
His heart could break and bleed no more. But he had given 
to the world a sublime exhibition of courage, a noble ex- 
ample of duty; had perished for his country as truly as 
though he had worn its uniform in the lines of battle and 
on the fields of France; had died a peace-maker and a lamb 
of sacrifice upon an altar of reconciliation; and, best of all, 
had bequeathed to the world a Vision—which, if never real- 
ized in a millenium of the nations, will be forever associated 
with the name of Wilson, will forever hang, like a rain- 
bow, in the world’s sky, an ideal and an inspiration, lifting 
it to higher and to nobler things—one of humanity’s im- 
mortal dreams. 


END OF PART ONE. 


Ee WOODROW WILSON 


PART II. 
THE DREAM 





WOODROW WILSON’S DREAM: FULL TEXT OF THE 
LEAGUE COVENANT. 





| RIGINALLY a part of the proposed Treaty of Ver- 
é sailles, the covenant providing for a League of 
GC) Nations, was incorporated as Article I of that his- 
toric instrument, adopted by the confreres at the 

Peace Table, in the early summer of 1919. It was a great 
victory for Mr. Wilson that the covenant was thus made an 
integral part of the Treaty, and not adopted in a form de- 
tached therefrom, and to secure this result he fought almost 
single-handed. The Covenant was the work of several 
minds—not of Mr. Wilson’s alone, but it was he who gave 
to the famous article its final form and who became its 
most illustrious champion, both at the Peace Table, and 
in the years which followed. The idea of a League was 
undoubtedly Mr. Wilson’s. Dr. Stockton Axson, a brother 
of the first Mrs. Wilson, and himself a noted educator, is 
quoted in the New York Times as saying that Mr. Wilson, 
early in the fall of 1914, made to him this remark: ‘All 
nations must be absorbed into some great association of 
nations, whereby all shall guarantee the integrity of each 
so that any one nation violating the agreement shall bring 
punishment upon itself automatically.” Mr. Wilson won 
his fight in Europe, only to lose it at home, but the future 
may yet witness a revolution of sentiment. President Brant- 
ing, of the League Council, now functioning at Geneva, Switz- 
erland, said at the time of Mr. Wilson’s death: ‘‘The League 
of Nations will always remember that President Wilson, 
inspired as he was by the highest ideals for the peaceful 
development of humanity, contributed more than any one 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM Lid 


else to the creation of this organization of international co- 
operation and conciliation. His memory will always live 
cherished and venerated.” Here follows the full text of 
the League Covenant: 


*THE COVENANT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. 
The High Contracting Parties, 


In order to promote international co-operation and to achieve 
international peace and security 


(1) by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, 


(2) by the prescription of open, just and honorable relations 
between nations, 


(3) by the firm establishment of the understandings of interna- 
tional law as the actual rule of conduct among Govern- 
ments, and 


(4) by the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for 
all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples 
with one another. 


Agree to this Covenant of the League of Nations. 


ARTICLE 1. 


~~) HE original Members of the League of Nations shall be those 

of the Signatories which are named in the Annex to this 

(4 Covenant and also such of those other States named in the 

Annex as shall accede without reservation to this Covenant. 

Such accession shall be effected by a Declaration deposited 

with the Secretariat within two months of the coming into force of 

the Covenant. Notice thereof shall be sent to all other Members 
of the League. 

Any fully self-governing State, Dominion or Colony not named in 
the Annex may become a Member of the League if its admission is 
agreed to by two-thirds of the Assembly, provided that it shall give 
effective guarantees of its sincere intention to observe its international 
obligations, and shall accept such regulations as may be prescribed 
by the League in regard to its military, naval and air forces and 
armaments. 

Any Member of the League may, after two years’ notice of its 
intention so to do, withdraw from the League, provided that all its 
international obligations under this Covenant shall have been fulfilled 
at the time of its withdrawal. 


ARTICLE 2. 


The action of the League under this Covenant shall be effected 
through the instrumentality of an Assembly and of a Council, with 
a permanent Secretariat. 


116 WOODROW WILSON 


ARTICLE 3. 


The Assembly shall consist of Representatives of the Members of 
the League. 

The Assembly shall meet at stated intervals and from time to time 
as occasion may require at the Seat of the League or at such other 
place as may be decided upon. 

The Assembly may deal at its meetings with any matter within 
the sphere of action of the League or affecting the peace of the 


world. 
At meetings of the Assembly each Member of the League shall 
have one vote, and may have not more than three Representatives. 


ARTICLE 4. 

The Council shall consist of Representatives of the Principa] Allied 
and Associated Powers, together with Representatives of four other 
Members of the League. These four Members of the League shall 
be selected by the Assembly from time to time in its discretion. 
Until the appointment of the Representatives of the four Members of 
the League first selected by the Assembly, Representatives of Bel- 
gium, Brazil, Spain and Greece shall be members of the Council. 

With the approval of the majority of the Assembly, the Council 
may name additional Members of the League whose Representatives 
shall always be members of the Council; the Council with like ap- 
proval may increase the number of Members of the League to be 
selected by the Assembly for representation on the Council. 

The Council shall meet from time to time as occasion may require, 
and at least once a year, at the Seat of the League, or at such other 
place as may be decided upon. 

The Council may deal at its meetings with any matter within the 
sphere of action of the League or affecting the peace of the world. 

Any Member of the League not represented on the Council shall 
be invited to send a Representative to sit as a member at any meet- 
ing of the Council during the consideration of matters specially affect- 
ing the interests of that Member of the League. 

At meetings of the Council, each Member of the League represented 
on the Council shall have one vote, and may have not more than one 
representative. 

ARTICLE 5. 

Except where otherwise expressly provided in this Covenant or by 
the terms of the present Treaty, decisions at any meeting of the 
Assembly or of the Council shall require the agreement of all the 
Members of the League represented at the meeting. 

All matters of procedure at meetings of the Assembly or of the 
Council, including the appointment of Committees to investigate par- 
ticular matters, shall be regulated by the Assembly or by the Council 
and may be decided by a majority of the Members of the League 
represented at the meeting. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM Ti? 


The first meeting of the Assembly and the first meeting of the 
Council shall be summoned by the President of the United States of 
America. 


ARTICLE 6. 


The permanent Secretariat shall be established at the Seat of the 
League. The Secretariat shall comprise a Secretary General and 
such secretaries and staff as mav be required. 

The first Secretary General shall be the person named in the Annex; 
thereafter the Secretary General shall be appointed by the Council 
with the approval of the majority of the Assembly. 

The secretaries and staff of the Secretariat shall be appointed by 
the Secretary General with the approval of the Council. 

The Secretury General shall act in that capacity at all meetings of 
the Assembly and of the Council. 

The expenses of the Secretariat shall be borne by the Members of 
the League in accordance with the apportionment of the expenses of 
the International Bureau of the Universal Postal Union. 


ARTICLE 7. 


The Seat of the League is established at Geneva. 

The Council may at any time decide that the Seat of the League 
shall be established elsewhere. 

All positions under or in connection with the League, including the 
Secretariat, shall be open equally to men and women. 

Representatives of the Members of the League and officials of the 
League when engaged on the business of the League shall enjoy 
diplomatic privileges and immunities. 

The buildings and other property occupied by the League or its 
officials or by Representatives attending its meetings shall be 
inviolable. 


ARTICLE 8. 


The Members of the League recognize that the maintenance of 
peace requires the reduction of national armaments to the lowest 
point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common 
action of international obligations. 

The Council, taking account of the geographical situation and cir- 
cumstances of each State, shall formulate plans for such reduction for 
the consideration and action of the several Governments. 

Such plans shall be subject to reconsideration and revision at least 
every ten years. 


118 WOODROW WILSON 


After these plans shall have been adopted by the several Govern- 
ments, the limits of armaments therein fixed shall not be exceeded 
without the concurrence of the Council. 


The Members of the League agree that the manufacture by private 
enterprise of munitions and implements of war is open to grave 
objections. The Council shall advise how the evil effects attendant 
upon such manufacture can be prevented, due regard being had to the 
necessities of those Members of the League which are not able to 
manufacture the munitions and implements of war necessary for 
their safety. 


The Members of the League undertake to interchange full and 
frank information as to the scale of their armaments, their military, 
naval and air programs and the condition of such of their industries 
as are adaptable to warlike purposes. 


ARTICLE 9. 


A permanent Commission shall be constituted to advise the Coun- 
cil on the execution of the provisions of Articles 1 and 8 and on mili- 
tary, naval and air questions generally. 


ARTICLE 10. 


The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve 
as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing 
political independence of all Members of the League. In case of any 
such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression 


the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall 
be fulfilled. 


ARTICLE 11. 


Any war or threat of war, whether immediately affecting any of 
the Members of the League or not, is hereby declared a matter of 
concern to the whole League, and the League shall take any action 
that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of 
nations. In case anv such emergency should arise the Secretary 
General shall on the request of any Member of the League forth- 
with summon a meeting of the Council. 


It is also declared to be the friendly right of each Member of the 
League to bring to the attention of the Assembly or of the Council 
any circumstance whatever affecting international relations which 
threatens to disturb international peace or the good understanding 
between nations upon which peace depends. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 119 


ARTICLE 12. 


The Members of the League agree that if there should arise between 
them any dispute likely to lead to a rupture, they will submit the 
matter either to arbitration or to inquiry by the Council, and they 
agree in no case to resort to war until three months after the award 
by the arbitrators or the report by the Council. 

In any case under this Article the award of the arbitrators shall 
be made within a reasonable time, and the report of the Council shail 
be made within six months after the submission of the dispute. 


ARTICLE 13. 


The Members of the League agree that whenever any dispute shall 
arise between them which they recognize to be suitable for submission 
to arbitration and which cannot be satisfactorily settled by diplomacy, 
they will submit the whole subject-matter to arbitration. 

Disputes as to the interpretation of a treaty, as to any question 
of international law, as to the existence of any fact which if estab- 
lished would constitute a breach of any international obligation, or as 
to the extent and nature of the reparation to be made for any such 
breach, are declared to be among those which are generally suitable 
for submission to arbitration. 

For the consideration of any such dispute the court of arbitration 
to which the case is referred shall be the Court agreed on by the 
parties to the dispute or stipulated in any convention existing between 
them. | 

The Members of the League agree that they will carry out in full 
good faith any award that may be rendered, and that they will not 
resort to war against a Member of the League which complies there- 
with. In the event of any failure to carry out such an award, the 
Council shall propose what steps should be taken to give effect thereto. 


ARTICLE 14. 


The Council shall formulate and submit to the Members of the 
League for adoption plans for the establishment of a Permanent 
Court of International Justice. The Court shall be competent to 
hear and determine any dispute of an international character which 
the parties thereto submit to it. The Court may also give an advisory 
opinion upon any dispute or question referred to it by the Council or 
by the Assembly. 


ARTICLE 15. 


If there should arise between Members of the League any dispute 
likely to lead to a rupture, which is not submitted to arbitration in 


120 . WOODROW WILSON 


accordance with Article 18, the Members of the League agree that 
they will submit the matter to the Council. Any party to the dispute 
may effect such submission by giving notice of the existence of 
the dispute to the Secretary General, who will make all necessary 
arrangements for a full investigation and consideration thereof. 


For this purpose the parties to the dispute will communicate to the 
Secretary General, as promptly as possible, statements of their case 
with all the relevant facts and papers, and the Council may forth- 
with direct the publication thereof. 

The Council shall endeavor to effect a settlement of the dispute, and 
if such efforts are successful a statement shall be made public giving 
such facts and explanations regarding the dispute and the terms of 
settlement thereof as the Council may deem appropriate. 

If the dispute is not thus settled, the Council either unanimously or 
by a majority vote shall make and publish a report containing a state- 
ment of the facts of the dispute and the recommendations which are 
deemed just and proper in regard thereto. 

Any Member of the League represented on the Council may make 
public a statement of the facts of the dispute and of its conclusions 
regarding the same. 

If a report by the Council is unanimously agreed to by the mem- 
bers thereof other than the Representatives of one or more of the 
parties to the dispute, the Members of the League agree that they 
will not go to war with any party to the dispute which complies with 
the recommendations of the report. 

If the Council fails to reach a report which is unanimously agreed 
to by the members thereof, other than the Representatives of one or 
more of the parties to the dispute, the Members of the League reserve 
to themselves the right to take such action as thy shall consider neces- 
sary for the maintenance of right and justice. 


If the dispute between the parties is claimed by one of them, and is 
found by the Council to arise out of a matter which by international 
law is solely within the domestic jurisdiction of that party, the Coun- 
cil shal! so report, and shall make no recommendation as to its 
settlement. 

The Council may in any case under this Article refer the dispute 
to the Assembly. The dispute shall be so referred at the request of 
either party to the dispute, provided that such request be made within 
fourteen days after the submission of the dispute to the Council. 

In any case referred to the Assembly, all the provisions of this 
Article and of Article 12 relating to the action and powers of the 
Council shall apply to the action and powers of the Assembly, pro- 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 121 


vided that a report made by the Assembly, if concurred in by the 
Representatives of those Members of the League represented on the 
Council and of a majority of the other Members of the League, 
exclusive in each case of the Representatives of the parties to the 
dispute, shall have the same force as a report by the Council con- 
curred in by all the members thereeof other than the Representatives 
of one or more of the parties to the dispute. | 


ARTICLE 16. 


Should any member of the League resort to war in disregard of its 
covenants under Articles 12, 18 or 15, it shall ipso facto be deemed 
to have committed an act of war against all other Members of the 
League, which hereby undertake immediately to subject it to the 
severance of all trade or financial relations, the prohibition of all 
intercourse between their nationals and the nationals of the covenant- 
breaking State, and the prevention of all financial, commercial or 
personal intercourse between the nationals of the covenant-breaking 
State and the nationals of any other State, whether a Member of the 
League or not. 

It shall be the duty of the Council in such case to recommend to 
the several Governments concerned what effective military, naval 
or air force the Members of the League shall severally contribute to 
the armed forces to be used to protect the covenants of the League. 

The Members of the League agree, further, that they will mutually 
support one another in the financial and economic measures which 
are taken under this Article, in order to minimize the loss and incon- 
venience resulting from the above measures, and that they will 
mutually support one another in resisting any special measures aimed 
at one of their number by the covenant-breaking State, and that 
they will take the necessary steps to afford passage through their 
territory to the forces of any of the Members of the League which 
are co-operating to protect the covenants of the League. 

Any Member of the League which has violated any covenant of 
the League may be declared to be no longer a Member of the League 
by a vote of the Council concurred in by the Representatives of all 
the other Members of the League represented thereon. 


ARTICLE 17. 


In the event of a dispute between a Member of the League and a 
State which is not a Member of the League, or between States not 
Members of the League, the State or States not Members of the 
League shall be invited to accept the obligations of membership in the 
League for the purposes of such dispute, upon such conditions as the © 


122 WOODROW WILSON 


Council may deem just. If such invitation is accepted, the provisions 
of Articles 12 to 16 inclusive shall be applied with such modifica- 
tions as may be deemed necessary by the Council. 

Upon such invitation being given, the Council shall immediately 
institute an inquiry into the circumstances of the dispute and rec- 
ommend such action as may seem best and most effectual in the 
circumstances. 

If a State so invited shall refuse to accept the obligations of 
Membership in the League for the purpose of such dispute, and shall 
resort to war against a Member of the League, the provisions of 
Article 16 shall be applicable as against the State taking such action. 

If both parties to the dispute when so invited refuse to accept the 
obligations of membership in the League for the purposes of such 
dispute, the Council may take such measures and make such recom- 
mendations as will prevent hostilities and will result in the settlement 
of the dispute. 


ARTICLE 18. 


Every treaty or international engagement entered into hereafter by 
any Member of the League shall be forthwith registered with the 
Secretariat and shall as soon as possible be published by it. No such 
treaty or international engagement shall be binding until so reg- 
istered. 


ARTICLE 19. 


The Assembly may from time to time advise the reconsideration by 
Members of the League of treaties which have become inapplicable 
and the consideration of international conditions whose continuance 
might endanger the peace of the world. 


ARTICLE 20. 


The Members of the League severally agree that this Covenant is 
accepted as abrogating all obligations or understandings inter se 
which are inconsistent with the terms thereof, and solemnly undertake 
that they will not hereafter enter into any engagements inconsistent 
with the terms thereof. 

In case any Member of the League shall, before becoming a Mem- 
ber of the League, have undertaken any obligations inconsistent with 
the terms of this Covenant, it shall be the duty of such Member to 
take immediate steps to procure its release from such obligations. 


ARTICLE 21. 


Nothing in this Covenant shall be deemed to affect the validity of 
international engagements, such as treaties of arbitration or regional 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM eas, 


understandings like the Monroe Doctrine, for securing the mainten- 
ance of peace. 


ARTICLE 22. 


To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late 
war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which 
formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet 
able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the 
modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well- 
being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civi- 
lization and that securities for the performance of this trust should 
be embodied in this Covenant. 


The best method of giving practical effect to this principle is that 
the tutelage of such peoples should be entrusted to advanced nations 
who by reason of their resources, their experience or their geographi- 
cal position can best undertake this responsibility, and who are will- 
ing to accept it, and that this tutelage should be exercised by giving 
Mandatories on behalf of the League. 

The character of the mandatory to differ according to the stage 
of development of the people, the geographical situation of the ter- 
ritory, its economic conditions and other similar circumstances. 

Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire 
have reached a stage of development where their existence as inde- 
pendent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the render- 
ing of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until 
such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these com- 
munities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the 
Mandatory. 

Other peoples, especially those of Central Africa, are at such a 
stage that the Mandatory must be responsible for the administration 
of the territory under conditions which will guarantee freedom of 
conscience and religion, subject only to the maintenance of public 
order and morals, the prohibition of abuses such as the slave trade, 
the arms traffic and the liquor traffic, and the prevention of the 
establishment of fortifications or military and naval bases and of 
military training of the natives for other than police purposes and 
the defense of territory, and will also secure equal opportunities for 
the trade and commerce of other Members of the League. 

There are territories, such as Southwest Africa and certain of the 
South Pacific Islands, which, owing to the sparseness of their popu- 
lation or their small size, or their remoteness from the centres of 
civilization, or the geographical contiguity to the territory of the 
Mandatory, and other circumstances, can be best administered under 
the laws of the Mandatory as integral portions of its territory, subject 


124 WOODROW WILSON 


to the safeguards above mentioned in the interests of the indigenous 
population. 

In every case of mandate the Mandatory shall render to the Council 
an annual report in reference to the territory committed to its 


charge. 
The degree of authority, control, or administration to be exercised 


by the Mandatory shall, if not previously agreed upon by the Members 
of the League, be explicitly defined in each case by the Council. 

A permanent Commission shall be constituted to receive and ex- 
amine the annual reports of the Mandatories and to advise the Coun- 
cil on all matters relating to the observance of the mandates. 


ARTICLE 23. 


Subject to and in accordance with the provisions of international 
conventions existing or hereafter to be agreed upon, the Members 
of the League: 

(a) will endeavor to secure and maintain fair and humane condi- 
tions of labor; for men, women and children, both in their own coun- 
tries and in all countries to which their commercial and industrial 
relations extend, and for that purpose will establish and maintain 
the necessary international organizations: 

(b) undertake to secure just treatment of the native inhabitants 
of territories under their control: 

(c) will entrust the League with the general supervision over the 
execution of agreements with regard to the traffic in women and 
children and the traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs: 

(d) will entrust the League with the general supervision of the 
trade in arms and ammunition with the countries in which the control 
of this traffic is necessary in the common interest: 

(e) will make provision to secure and maintain freedom of communi- 
cations and of transit and equitable treatment for the commerce of 
all Members of the League. In this connection, the special neces- 
sities of the regions devastated during the war of 1914-1918 shall 
be borne in mind: 

(f) will endeavor to take steps in matters of international concern 
for the prevention and control of disease. 


ARTICLE 24, 


There shall be placed under the direction of the League all inter- 
national bureaux already established by general treaties if the parties 
to such treaties consent. All such international bureaux and all 
commissions for the regulation of matters of international interest 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 125 


hereafter constituted shall be placed under the direction of the 
League. 

In all matters of international interest which are regulated by 
general conventions, but which are not placed under the control of 
international bureaux or commissions, the Secretariat of the League 
shall, subject to the consent of the Council and if desired by the par- 
ties, collect and distribute all relevant information and shall render 
any other assistance which may be necessary or desirable. 

The Council may include as part of the expenses of the Secretariat 
the expenses of any bureau or commission which is placed under 
the direction of the League. 


ARTICLE 25. 


The Members of the League agree to encourage and promote the 
establishment and co-operation of duly authorized voluntary national 
Red Cross organziations having as purposes the improvement of 
health, the prevention of disease and the mitigation of suffering 
throughout the world. 


ARTICLE 26. 


Amendments to this Covenant will take effect when ratified by the 
Members of the League whose Representatives compose the Council 
and by a majority of the Members of the League whose Rpresenta- 
tives compose the Assembly. 

No such amendment shall bind any Member of the League which 
signifies its dissent therefrom, but in that case it shall cease to be 
a Member of the League. 


ANNEX. 


I. Original Members of the League of Nations Signatories of the 
Treaty of Peace. 


United States of America. Haiti. 

Belgium. Hedjaz. 

Bolivia. Honduras. 

Brazil. Italy. 

British Empire. Japan. 
Canada Liberia. 
Australia. Nicaragua. 
South Africa. Panama. 
New Zealand. Peru. 


India. Poland. 


126 WOODROW WILSON 


China. Portugal. 

Cuba. Roumania. 

Ecuador. Serb Croat-Slovene State. 

France. Siam. 

Greece. Czecho-Slovakia. 

Guatemala. Uruguay. 
States Invited to Accede to the Covenant. 

Argentine Republic. Persia. 

Chili. Salvador. 

Colombia. Spain. 

Denmark. Sweden. 

Netherlands. Switzerland. 

Norway. Venezuela. 

Paraguay. 


PHRASES WOODROW WILSON MADE FAMOUS 


“PITILESS PUBLICITY.”—“I have made it my business for years 
to observe and understand that system (system of party bosses) 
and I hate it as thoroughly as I understand it. I would propose to 
abolish it * * * by the election to office of men who refuse to 
submit to it and bend all their energies to break it up, and by 
pitiless publicity.”—October, 1910, while Democratic candidate for 
Governor of New Jersey. 


“WATCHFUL WAITING.”’—“There can be no certain prospect of 
peace in America until General Huerta has surrendered his usurped 
authority in Mexico. * * * We shall not, I believe, be obliged to 
alter our policy of watchful waiting. And then when the time 
comes, we shall hope to see constitutional order restored in dis- 
tressed Mexico by the concert and energy of such of her leaders 
as prefer the liberty of their people to their own ambitions.”— 
Message to Congress, Dec. 3, 1913. 


“TOO PROUD TO FIGHT.”—“There is such a thing as a man being 
too proud to fight; there is such a thing as a nation being so 
right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is 
right.”—Address at Philadelphia, May 10, 1915. 


“LITTLE GROUP OF WILLFUL MEN.”—“A little group of willful 
men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the 
great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible. 
The remedy? ‘There is but one remedy. The only remedy is that 
the rules of the Senate shall be so altered that it can act.”— 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 127 


Statement when the Armed Ship bill was talked to death in the 
closing hours of the Senate session, March 4, 1917. 


“MAKE THE WORLD SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY.”—“The world 
must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted 
upon the tested foundations of political lberty..—War message 
to Congress, April 2, 1917. 


“OPEN COVENANTS OPENLY ARRIVED AT.”—“Open covenants 
openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private interna- 
tional understanding of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed 
always frankly and in the public view.’—Point I. of the Fourteen 
Points for a basis for peace, contained in a message to Congress, 
January 8, 1918. 


“SELF-DETERMINATION.”—“National aspirations must be re- 
spected; peoples may now be dominated and governed only by their 
own consent. ‘Self-determination’ is not a mere phrase. It is an 
imperative principle of action which statesmen will henceforth 
ignore at their own peril.’”—Message to Congress, Feb. 11, 1918. 


“CONTEMPTIBLE QUITTERS.’—‘“I hear some gentlemen who are 
themselves incapable of altruistic purposes say, ‘Oh, but that is 
altruistic. It is not our business to take care of the weak nations 
of the world.’ No, but it is our business to prevent wars, and 
if we don’t take care of the weak nations of the world there will 
be war. Let them show me how they will keep out of war by not 
protecting them. Let them show me how they will prove that 
having gone into an enterprise they are not absolutely contempti- 
ble quitters if they don’t see the game through.”—Address at 
luncheon of the Chamber of Commerce, St. Louis, Sept. 6, 1919. 


“GREAT AND SOLEMN REFERENDUM.”—‘Personally, I do not 
accept the action of the Senate (in refusing to ratify the Treaty 
of Versailles) as the decision of the nation. If there is any doubt 
as to what the people of the country think on this vital matter, 
the clear and single way out is to submit it for determination at 
the next election to the voters of the nation, to give the next 
election the form of a great and solemn referendum, a referendum 
as to the part the United States is to play in completing the 
settlements of the war and in the prevention in the future of such 
outrages as Germany attempted to perpetrate.”—Letter sent to 
Jackson Day Dinner, Washington, Jan. 8, 1920. 


“STRICT ACCOUNTABILITY.”—‘If such a deplorable situation 
should arise (German U-boats sinking American ships), the Im- 
perial German Government can readily appreciate that the Gov- 


128 WOODROW WILSON 


ernment of the United States would be constrained to hold the 
Imperial Government of Germany to a strict accountability for 
such acts of their naval authorities, and to take any steps it might 
be necessary to take to safeguard American lives and property 
and to secure to American citizens the full enjoyment of their 
acknowledged rights on the high seas.”—-Message to German Gov- 
ernment, protesting unrestricted submarine warfare, February 10, 


1915. 


“PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY.”—“The statesmen of both the groups 
of nations, now arrayed against one another, have said, in terms 
that could not be misinterpreted, that it was no part of the pur- 
pose they had in mind to crush their antagonists. They imply 
first of all that it must be a peace without victory. It is not 
pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my 
own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no 
other interpretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to 
face realities and to face them without soft concealments. Vic- 
tory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms im- 
posed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, 
under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, 
a resentment, a bitter memory, upon which the terms of peace 
would rest, not permanently, but only as upon a quicksand. Only 
peace between equals can last.”—-Message to the Senate, Jan. 23, 
1917. 


“ARMED NEUTRALITY.’—‘“‘We stand firm in armed neutrality, 
since in no other way can we demonstrate what it is we insist upon 
and cannot forego. We may even be drawn on, by circumstances, 
not by our own purpose and desire, to a more active assertion of 
our rights as we see them and a more immediate association with 
the great struggle itself.”—Second Inaugural, March 5, 1917. 


“NO QUARREL WITH THE GERMAN PEOPLE.”—“We have no 
quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward 
them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their 
impulse that their Government acted in entering this war.”—War 
message to Congress, April 2, 1917. 


OTHER HISTORIC SENTENCES. 


“The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name. 
We must be impartial in thought as well as in action.”—Proclama- 
tion, August 18, 1914. 


“The Imperial German Government will not expect the Government 
of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary to the 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 129 


performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United 
States and its citizens and of safeguarding their free exercise and 
enjoyment.”—Note to Germany, May 12, 1915. 


“T can not consent to any abridgement of the rights of American 
citizens in any respect.’’—-Letter to Senator Stone, February 24, 1916. 


“Unless the Imperial German Government should now immediately 
declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of war- 
fare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels, this Government 
can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the Gov- 
ernment of the German Empire altogether.”—Address to Congress, 
April 19, 1916. 


“The objects which the statesmen of the belligerents on both 
sides have in mind in this war are virtually the same, as stated in 
general terms to their own people and to the world.”—December 18, 
1916. 


“All diplomatic relations between the United States and the Ger- 
man Empire are severed.”—-Address to Congress, February 3, 1917. 


“Our present and immediate task is to win the war and nothing 
shall turn us aside from it until it is accomplished.”—-December 4, 
1917; 


The “Fourteen Points,” or “program of the world’s peace,” begin- 
ning with “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at,” and “abso- 
lute freedom of navigation upon the seas, alike in peace and in war,” 
laying down specific conditions of peace, and demanding “a general 
association of nations” with “guaranties of political independence and 
territorial integrity to great and small States alike.”—-Address to 
Congress, January 18, 1918. 


“Force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous 
triumphant force which shall make right the law of the world and 
cast every selfish dominion down in the dust.”—Speech at Baltimore, 
April 6, 1918. 


“The League of Nations was the noly hope for mankind. . . . Dare 
we reject it and break the heart of the world?’”—Address to the 
Senate, July 10, 1919. 


WILSON’S FAMOUS FOURTEEN POINTS. 


One of the outstanding achievements for which Wilson’s name will 
go down in history is his authorship of the famous Fourteen Points. 
These were delivered to Congress January 8, 1918, as the basis on 
which the United States would be willing to make peace. 


130 WOODROW WILSON 


In introducing the Fourteen Points, which follow, Wilson said: 


“The program of the world’s peace, therefore, is our program, and 
that program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this: 


1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there 
shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but 
diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. 


2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial 
waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed 
in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of 
international covenants. 


3. The removal so far as possible of all economic barriers and the 
establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations 
consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its main- 
tenance. 


4, Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments 
will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. 


5. A free, open-minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of all 
colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that 
in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the 
populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable 
claims of the Government whose title is to be determined. 


6. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of 
all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest co- 
operation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an 
unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent 
determination of her own _ political development and national 
policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free 
nations under institutions of her own choosing, and, more than a wel- 
come, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself 
desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the 
months to come will be the acid test of their good-will, of their com- 
prehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests 
and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy. 


7. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and 
restored without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she 
enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act 
will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations 
in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the 
government of their relations with one another. Without this healing 
act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever 
impaired. 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM bs | 


8. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions 
restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the 
matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the 
world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace 
may once more be made secure in the interest of all. 


9. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along 
clearly recognizable lines of nationality. 


10. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the na- 
tions we wish safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest 
opportunity of autonomous development. 


11. Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied 
territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the 
sea; and the relations of the several Balkan States to one another 
determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines 
of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the 
political nad economic independence and territorial integrity of the 
several Balkan States should be entered into. 


12. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should 
be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are 
now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of 
life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous devel- 
opment, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free 


passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international 
guaratees. 


18. An independent Polish State should be erected which should 
include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, 
which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea and whose 
political and economic independence and territorial integrity should 
be guaranteed by international covenant. 


14. A general association of nations must be formed under specific 
covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political 
independence and territorial integrity to great and small States alike. 


WILSON’S FOUR GREAT OBJECTS. 


On July 4, 1918—Independence Day—in a great speech delivered at 
Mount Vernon, in the shadow of Washington’s tomb, President Wilson 
clearly set forth the great objects for which the allied powers were 
fighting, and the general terms on which alone there could be a set- 
tlement. Said he: 


“There can be but one issue. The settlement must be final. There 


132 WOODROW WILSON 


can be no compromise. No half-way decision would be tolerable. 
No half-way decision would be conceivable. These are the ends for 
which the associated peoples of the world are fighting, and which 
must be conceded them before there can be peace:— 


“First, the destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere that can 
separately, secretly, and of its single choice, disturb the peace of the 
world, or, if it cannot be presently destroyed, at the least, its reduc- 
tion to virtual impotence. 


“Second, the settlement of every question, whether of territory or 
sovereignty, of economic arrangement or of political relationship, 
upon the basis of a free acceptance of that settlement by the people 
immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material inter- 
est or advantage of any other nation or people which might desire 
a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or 
mastery. 

“Third, the consent of all nations to be governed in their conduct 
toward each other by the same principles of honor and respect for the 
common law of civilized society that govern the individual citizens 
of all modern states, and in their relations with one another, to the 
end that all promises and covenants may be sacredly observed, no 
private plots or conspiracies hatched, no selfish injuries wrought with 
impunity, and a mutual trust established upon the handsome found- 
ation of a mutual respect for right. 


“Fourth, the establishment of an organization of peace which 
shall make it certain that the combined power of free nations will 
check every invasion of right, and serve to make peace and justice all 
the more secure by affording a definite tribunal of opinion to which 
all must submit, and by which every international adjustment that 
cannot be amicably agreed upon by the peoples directly concerned 
shall be sanctioned. 


“These great objects can be put into a single sentence: What we 


seek is the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed and 
sustained by the organized opinion of mankind.” 


WILSON’S LAST PUBLIC WORDS. 
Delivered Over the Radio on the Eve of Armistice Day, Nov. 10, 1923 


HE anniversary of Armistice Day should stir us to great 
exaltation of spirit because of the proud recollection that 

(0 it was our day, a day above those early days of that never- 
to-be-forgotten November which lifted the world to the 

high levels of vision and achievement upon which the great war for 
democracy and right was fought and won, although the stimulating 


THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 135 


memories of that happy triumph are forever marred and embittered 
for us by the shameful fact that when the victory was won—won, 
be it remembered, chiefly by the indomitable spirit and ungrudging 
sacrifices of our own incomparable soldiers—we turned our backs 
upon our associates and refused to bear any responsible part in the 
administration of peace, of the firm and permanent establishment of 
the results of the war—won at so terrible a cost of life and treasure 
—and withdrew into a sullen and selfish isolation, which is deeply 
ignoble because manifestly cowardly and dishonorable. 


“This must always be a source of deep mortification to us, and we 
shall inevitably be forced by the moral obligations of freedom and 
honor to retrieve that fatal error and assume once more the role of 
courage, self-respect and helpfulness which every true American must 
wish to regard as our natural part in the affairs of the world. 


“That we should have thus done a great wrong to civilization at one 
of the most critical turning points in the history of the world is the 
more to be deplored because every anxious year that has followed 
has made the exceedingly need for such service as we might have 
rendered more and more pressing as demoralizing circumstances which 
we might have controlled have gone from bad to worse. 


“And now, as if to furnish a sort of sinister climax, France and 
Italy between them have made waste paper of the Treaty of Ver- 
sailles, and the whole field of international relationships is in perilous 
confusion. 


“The affairs of the world can be set straight only by the firmest 
and most determined exhibition of the will to lead and make right 
prevail. 


“Happily, the present situation in the world of affairs affords us 
the opportunity to retrieve the past and to render to mankind the 
inestimable service of proving that there is at least one great and 
powerful nation which can turn away from programs of self-interest 
and devote itself to practicing and establishing the highest ideals of 
disinterested service and the consistent standards of conscience and 
of right. 


“The only way in which we can worthily give proof of our appre- 
ciation of the high significance of Armistice Day is by resolving to 
put self-interest away and once more formulate and act upon the 
highest ideals and purposes of international policy. 

“Thus, and only thus, can we return to the true traditions of 
America.” 


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THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM 135 


WILSON’S PUBLISHED WORK’S 


CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT, A STUDY IN AMERICAN POLI- 
TICS (1885). 


THE STATE—ELEMENTS OF HISTORICAL AND PRACTICAL 
POLITICS (1889) ; new edition (1911). 


DIVISION AND REUNION (1893). 

AN OLD MASTER AND OTHER POLITICAL ESSAYS (1898). 
MERE LITERATURE AND OTHER ESSAYS (1898). 

WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF (1915). 

GEORGE WASHINGTON (1896). 

A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE (1902). 


CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES 
(1908). 


THE NEW FREEDOM (19138). 
FREE LIFE (19138). 
ON BEING HUMAN (1916). 


BESIDES NUMEROUS UNCOLLECTED ESSAYS, ADDRESSES AND 
LETTERS, MESSAGES AND PAPERS. 


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Adams, Anne, 
son), 37. 
Adamson Law, The, 91-92. 
Archer, William, quoted, 54. 
Axson, Ellen Louise (Mrs. Wood- 
row Wilson), first wife of the 
President, studied art, 48; mar- 
ries Woodrow Wilson, 48-49; 
death of Mrs. Wilson, 49, 50, 83. 


Axson, I. S. K., Dr., 48. 
Axson, Stockton, Dr., 41, 115. 
Axson, S. E., Rev., 48. 


(Mrs. James Wil- 


Baltimore Convention, The, 65-69. 
Beach, Sylvester W., Dr., 109. 


Bliss, Tasker H., Gen., on the 
Peace Commission, 99. 

Bones, J. W., Mrs., 46. 

Browning, Robert, quoted, 9. 

Bryan, Wm. J., the cocked hat in- 
cident and the Joline letter, 30; 
turns the tide to Wilson at the 
Baltimore Convention, 66-68; be- 
comes Secretary of State, 70-71. 

Bryce, James, 50. 

Burleson, Albert S., Postmaster- 
General, 72. 


Campbell, Chas. A., Dr., 12. 
Carranza, 1719. 


Clark, Champ. How he lost the 
Nomination in 1912, 66-68. 


Cleveland, Grover, Ex-President of 
U. S., walks with Wilson at the 
latter’s inauguration as Presi- 
dent of Princeton, 8; subsequent 
break with Wilson, 31; story of 
rupture as told by David Law- 
rence, 56-58. 

Colby, Bainbridge, 
State, 72. 

Cox, James M., Governor, Demo- 
cratic Nominee for President in 
1920, 105. 


Secretary of 


Daniel, John W., Senator, 13. 


Daniels, Josephus, Secretary of 
the Navy, 71. 


Davidson College, 42. 


Derry, Joseph T., an early teacher 
of the President, 40. 


Diaz, Porfirio, Gen., 78. 
Dodd, Wm. E., Dr., 50, 54, 55. 
Dream, The. See League Covenant. 


Dreamer, The. See Woodrow Wil- 
son. 


Ellis, Wm. T., Dr., 9. 


Fall, A. B., Senator, overtaken by 
retribution, 105. 


Federal Reserve Act, 74. 
Fleming, Wm. H., Hon., 40. 

Four Great Objects, The, 131-132. 
Fourteen Points, The, 129-131. 


Freeman, James E., Right Rever- 
end, Bishop of Washington, offi- 
ciates at funeral, 109. 


Galt, Edith Bolling, (Mrs. Wood- 
row Wilson, the second), mar- 
riage to the President, 83. 


Garrison, Lindley M., Secretary of 
Warm il 


Grayson, Admiral, the Fresident’s 
Physician, 102, 103, 108. 

Gregory, Thomas W., Attorney- 
General, 72. 


Harding, Warren G., elected Presi- 
dent in 1920, 105; courtesies to 
Wilson at the inauguration; his 
death, 107-108. 


Harman, Judson, Gov., 66. 


Harvey, George, Col., an early 
champion of Mr. Wilson, 59-60; 
story of the break told, 65-66. 


Hibben, J. G., Dr., 31. 

Hillyer, George, Judge, 45. 

House, E. M., Col., the President’s 
Confidential Agent, also a mem- 
ber of the Peace Commission, 
SL hoo, oes Use 

Houston, David T., Secretary of 
Agriculture, 72. 

Hughes, Justice, Republican Nomi- 
nee for President, defeated in 
1916. 

Huerta, Victoriana, Mexican Us- 
UIpPer, Li; 1S: 


Joline Letter, The, 65. 


Lamar, Joseph Rucker, Justice, an 
early friend of the President, 
anecdote of, 40. 


Lane, Franklin Knight, Secretary 
of Interior, 72. 


Langley, Lee J., member of the Ga. 
Legislature, his story of the Wil- 
son Courtship at Rome, 48-49. 


Lansing, Robert, Secretary of 
State and member of the Peace 
Commission, his dismissal, etc., 
oli2, 99: 

Lawrence, David, quoted, 56. 

League Covenant, The, 114 et seq. 

Lodge, Henry Cabot, Senator, 104. 

Lusitania, The Sinking of the, 87. 


McAdoo, Wm. G., Secretary of the 
Treasury, marries the daughter 
of Mr. Wilson, handles the rail- 
way situation during the World 
War, 72, 50. 


McCombs, Wm. F., 30, 62. 

McReynolds, Justice and Attorney 
General, 72. 

Mexican Problem, The, 74, 75-83. 


Palmer, <A. Mitchell, 
General, 72. 

Palmer, Benj. M., Dr., 37. 

Panama Tolls, The, 74. 

Patton, Francis) 1., Dr.,'8, 52. 

Peace Table, At the, 96-106. 

Peeples, Henry C., quoted, 47. 

Pershing, J. J., Gen., 93. 

Princeton University, historic asso- 
ciations of, 10-11; Wilson’s un- 
dergraduate days, 42-46; _ be- 
comes president of the institu- 
tion, 52; a reformer, his efforts 
todemocratize, 51-56. 

Princeton, town of, local feelings, 


Attorney- 


Froctor, Wm. C., gift to Prince- 
ion, 56. 


Redfield, Wm. C., 
Commerce, 72. 
Reed, James A., Senator, fails to 
receive endorsement of Missouri, 

his home state, 105. 

Rennick, Edward I., an early law 
partner of Mr. Wilson in At- 
lanta, his career, 46. 


Secretary of 


ii. 


Rome, Ga., the early home of Mrs. 
Wilson, the President’s first 
wife; the church and the manse, 
46, 118. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, Col., defeated 
for President in 1912 as leader 
of the Progressive Republicans, 
68; seeks to raise a legion for 
the World War but is not given 
a commission, reasons therefor, 
92-93; in opposition to the Presi- 
dent’s Fourteen Points, 94; his 
death, 94. 

Root, Elihu, Senator, and advo- 
cate of Peace League, 98, 102. 


St. Alban, Mount, Cathedral on, 
burial-place of Mr. Wilson, 109. 

Smith, James, Jr., Senator, ‘6h 

Staunton, Va., birth-place of Mr. 
Wilson, 38. 

Stovall, Pleasant A., Hon., 40. 


Taft, Wm, H., ex-President, Chief 
Justice, and advocate of Peace 
League, defeated by Mr. Wilson 
in 1912 when he was the nomi- 
nee of the Old-Line Republicans, 
68, 40, 98. 

Taylor, James H., Dr., 
dent’s pastor, 18, 109. 

Tennyson, Alfred Lord, quoted, 
109. 

Ticknor, F. O., Dr., quoted 21-22. 

Tumulty, Joseph P., Jr., the Presi- 
dent’s private secretary, quoted 
on the New Jersey Campaign, 
61-62; quoted on the Mexican 
embroglio, 81-82, break with, 
47, 105-6. 


the Presi- 


Underwood, John W. H., Judge, 47. 
Underwood, Oscar W., Senator, 66. 


Van Dyke, Henry, Dr., friendly 
service to Mr. Wilson, an inter- 
esting story, becomes Minister to 
the Netherlands, 56-58. 

Villa, 79, 80. 

Von Bernstorff, Johann, Count, the 
German Minister, his dismissal, 
90. 

Washington, George, on the Valley 
Calvinists, 38. 

Watterson, Henry, Col., breaks 
with Mr. Wilson, but writes him 
a charming letter, 65. 


West, Andrew F., Dean, his views 
clash with Mr. Wilson’s, with 
reference to the Graduate School, 
31, 56-58. 

White, Edward D., Chief Justice, 
administers oath of office to 
President Wilson, 70. 

White, Henry, Hon., on the Peace 
Commission, 99. 

Wilson, Anne Adams, (Mrs. James 
Wilson), 37. 

Wilson, Edith Bolling Gait, (Mrs. 
Woodrow Wilson), the Presi- 
dent’s second wife, marriage to, 
83; sails with the President to 
Europe, 99; keeps vigil at her 
husband’s sick bed and becomes 
arbiter of the destinies of Amer- 
ica, 106; dedication of this vol- 
ume to, see introduction. 

Wilson, Eleanor Randolph (Mrs. 
McAdoo), daughter of the Presi- 
dent, 50. 

Wilson, Ellen Louise (Mrs. Wood- 
row Wilson), the President’s 
first wife. See Ellen Louise Ax- 
son. Marriage, 48-49; death of 
49-50, 83. 

Wilson, James, the immigrant, 
grandfather of the President, 37. 

Wilson, Jessie Woodrow (Mrs. 
Joseph R. Wilson), 19, 37. 

Wilson, Jessie Woodrow (Mrs. 
Sayre), 50; daughter of the 
President. 

Wilson, Joseph R., Dr., the Presi- 
dent’s father, a distinguished ed- 
ucator and divine; inscription on 
tomb, 19; stated clerk of the 
Southern Presbyterian Church 
for nearly forty years, 18, 39; as 
a literary critic, 41. 

Wilson, Margaret, 50, daughter of 
the President, 50. 

Wilson, P. W., Member of Parlia- 
ment, quoted, 32. 

Wilson, William B., Secretary of 
Labor, 72. 

Wilson, Woodrow, Twenty-eighth 
President of the United States, 
heredity, 36, et seq.; his birth, 
at Staunton, Va., 37; early boy- 
hood days in Augusta, Ga., 39-40; 
sees Jefferson Davis a prisoner, 
39; enters Princeton, after leav- 
ing Davidson, 42; writes “Cabi- 
net Government in the United 


ii. 


States, a precocious master- 
piece, foreshadowing his prin- 
ciples, 43; believes in open dis- 
cussion and free-trade, 44; en- 
ters University of Virginia Law 
School, 45; admitted to the bar, 
in Atlanta, Ga., and forms a 
partnership with E. I. Rennick, 
which partnership is soon dis- 
solved, 46; anecdote of his At- 
Janta residence, 47; takes a post- 
graduate course at Johns Hop- 
kins, and enters the faculty of 
Bryn Mawr, 47; marries Miss 
Ellen Louise Axson, 48; story of 
the courtship at Rome, 48-49; 
called to Wesleyan University, 
50; enters the faculty of Prince- 
ton, 50; political science, he 
teaches the fundamentals of gov- 
ernment, 51; becomes President 
of Princeton University in 1902, 
52; anecdote of, 8; his reforms 
52; efforts to raise the stand- 
ards of scholarship successful, 
but efforts to democratize 
Princeton encounter opposition, 
52-54; fight on the clubs, 54-55; 
fight over the graduate school, 
wide publicity gained, 56-58; his 
plans thwarted by colossal gifts, 
conditioned on what was tanta- 
mount to a rejection of the Wil- 
son ideals, 56-58; given the 
Democratic nomination for Gov- 
ernor of New Jersey, 58; fare- 
well ovation by students at com- 
mencement in 1910, 59; elected 
Governor of New Jersey, he 
serves notice on the bosses and 
prosecutes a vigorous campaign 
of reform, 60-64; achievements 
of his administration as Govern- 
or, 64; given the Democratic 
Nomination at Baltimore, for 
President of the United States, 
after a most dramatic turn of 
the tide, 65-69; celebration by 
Princeton students, 69; takes 
oath of office as President, on 
March 4, 1913; cabinet appoint- 
ments, 70-71; important reforms 
of the first administration, in- 
cluding the Federal Reserve 
system of Banks, and the tariff 
legislation, 73-74; repeal of the 
Panama tolls, 75; the Mexican 


problem, inherited from the Taft 
administration, 76-83; the World 
War, Mr. Wilson issues a procla- 
mation calling for strict neutral- 
ity, 84, et seq.; the sinking of 
the Lusitania, Mr. Wilson de- 
mands reparation, but hesitates 
to declare war, on the eve of ar. 
eicctlon, ween the country is not 
prepared to fight, 87; renom1- 
nated and re-elected, defeating 
Mr. Justice Hughes, 88; efforts to 
effect a world-peace, delivers his 
“neace without victory” mes- 
sage to Congress, 89; Germany’s 
note announcing a biockade con- 
strued as a threat to the United 
States, the German Ambassador 
is dismissed, 90; the old Con- 
gress is permitted to die, but the 
new Congress is called to con- 
vene at once, and after a great 
speech by Mr. Wilson war is de- 
elared, April 6, 1917, 91; prin- 
ciples defined by Mr. Wilson, a 
war not for indemnities, but to 
make the world safe for democ- 
racy, 91; progress of hostilities, 
Mr. Wilson’s commanding per- 
sonality and leadership, delivers 
his famous speech, laying down 
his “Fourteen Points,” 93; makes 
a partisan appeal later, urging 
the election of Democrats, 95; 
Republicans spend enormous 
sums in the fall elections and win 
both Houses of Congress. Peace 
comes on November 11, 1918, 
when the Armistice is signed, 96; 
Mr. Wilson resolves to attend 
the Peace Conference at Versail- 
les, 96; criticism does not deter 
him, 97-98; personnel of the 
Peace Commission, and why Taft 
and Roosevelt were not appoint- 
ed, 98-99; sails for Europe, 99; 
ovations abroad, 100; organiza- 
tion of the Council, 101; wins 
fight to make the League of Na- 
tions an integral part of the 
Treaty and returns to the United 
State to crystallize public senti- 
ment, 101; arrives again in 
France to find much of his work 
undone, there is another fight 
ahead, but single handed and 
alone he wins another great vic- 
tory, 102; submits Treaty to the 


Senate, 102; opposition develops, 
some hostile to the instrument, 
with or without reservations, 
103; to stem the tide, though 
worn by his labors, he begins a 
whirlwind tour of the country 
and is stricken with paralysis, 
104; returns at once to Washing- 
ton; his long illness, no restraint 
to the hostility of critics, 15; 
Republicans win in the Presiden- 
tial election of 1920, 106; Wil- 
son’s sublime optimism, 106; 
given the Nobel Peace Prize, 106; 
last days of Mr. Wilson, extra- 
ordinary scenes enacted on the 
streets, funeral obsequies, and a 
world’s admiring tribute, 107- 
113; famous phrases, 126-129; 
the Fourteen Points, 129-134; the 
Four Great Objects, 131-132; 
last public words, 132-133; pub- 
lished works of Mr. Wilson, 133; 
characteristics, 29-35; Mr. Wil- 
son an innovator, a path-finder 
and maker of precedents, 18; the 
best known man of all history, 9; 
his deep religious convictions, 
18-19, 34-85; his style, 20; his 
hatred of a quitter, 22; his num- 
erous breaks with public men, 
30-32; his Scotch inflexibility of 
character, 32; his intellectual at- 
tainments, 19-20; letter to the 
author, 13; ovation to Mr. Wil- 
son at the burial of the Unknown 
Soldier, 26, 103; Behold the 
Dreamer, 7-26. 

Wilson’s Career in Biographical 
Brieflets, 27-28. 

Wilson’s Famous Phrases, 126-129. 

Wilson’s Four Great Objects, 131- 
132. 

Wilson’s Fourteen Points, 129-131. 

Wilson’s Last Public Words, 132- 
133. 

Wilson’s Published Works, 135. 

Witherspoon, John, Dr., 11. 

Wood, Leonard, Gen., 93. 

Woodrows, The, 37-38. 

Woodrow, James, Dr., 41. 

Woodrow, Peter, Dr., 37. 

Woodrow, Thomas, Dr., 37. 

World War, The 84-89. 
America enters, 89-94. 

Wyman, Isaac, his gift of $3,000,- 
000 to the Princeton Graduate 
School, ends a bitter fight, 58, 59. 


iv. 


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